Dr Dina Dikovskaya, a senior research associate in the MRC PPU, has been awarded a Career Enhancing Grant by British Society for Immunology to conduct a pilot study on the importance of the oxidative stress response in Crohn’s disease.

This scheme offers flexible financial support to help BSI members at all career stages to benefit their careers.

Dina intends to use this grant as a step towards her goal to harness the cytoprotective Nrf2-mediated oxidative stress response to alleviate Crohn’s Disease, a currently incurable form of inflammatory bowel disease primarily affecting young people, with a growing world-wide prevalence. She will use models of Crohn’s disease that she has been developing in the Swamy lab, to evaluate this pathway in intestinal inflammation. The outcome will help to decide whether oxidative stress response is functional in this context and can be exploited for the benefit of Crohn’s Disease patients, or whether this pathway is somehow inactivated by an unknown mechanism. In both cases, the new data will support Dina in her future funding applications.

Dina said “I am very grateful to BSI for this support, which will allow me to pursue my research interests and future career at the junction between two disciplines, intestinal inflammation and cellular stress responses. I believe that bringing these two fields together has a real potential to advance our understanding of Crohn’s Disease and help patients”.

For more information see https://www.immunology.org/membership/grants-prizes/bsi-career-enhancing-grants