Department of Medicine
University of Pittsburgh
Meenakshi Arora, PhD
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Research Assistant Professor Phone: 412-692-2211 |
Bio
Dr. Meenakshi Arora received her M.Biotech in 1995 and her PhD in 1999 from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. She completed her first post-doctoral fellowship at School of Biosciences, University of California Irvine. After spending three years as a Research Associate in the laboratory of Dr. Prabir Ray, she was promoted to full time faculty as Research Assistant Professor in Dr. Prabir Ray’s group in Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine in 2007.
Academic and Research Interests
Dr. Arora’s post-doctoral research focused on the immunomodulatory functions of statins, best known as cholesterol-reducing agents. These studies showed for the first time the ability of statins to act on dendritic cells to bias T cell differentiation towards the Th2 lineage. Dr. Arora’s current research in Dr. Ray’s group mainly focuses on the generation of myeloid suppressor cells and their role in the regulation of pulmonary immune responses. Her studies also address the possible mechanisms underlying MSC-mediated suppression and maintenance of long-term tolerance in the lung diseases. She was awarded an independent Beginning Grant-in-aid from American Heart Association in 2008 to study the role of these myeloid suppressor cells in immunologic tolerance of organ transplantation.
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Figure 1. Light and scanning electron microscopy of dendritic cells (DCs) cultured in the presence or absence of simvastatin. Both the control DCs and simvastatin-treated DCs displayed typical DC-type morphology. However, the simvastatin-treated DCs adhered less well to glass, were somewhat rounder and produced high levels of the chitinase family protein Ym1 which promoted Th2 differentiation. |
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Figure 2. House Dust Mite (HDM) model of pulmonary allergy. Animals were exposed to i.t. HDM at indicated time points. Seventy two hrs after the final HDM exposure lung tissues were collected. As shown in the figure, administration of allergen resulted in the eosinophilic infiltration (A) and mucus production (B) in the lung. |
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Figure 3. Immunophenotyping of myeloid suppressor cells by flow cytometry. These cells are essentially CD11b+Gr1+CD11clo. |
Key Publications
Arora M, Chen L, Paglia M, Gallagher I, Allen JE, Vyas YM, Ray A, Ray P. Simvastatin promotes Th2-type responses through the induction of the chitinase family member Ym1 in dendritic cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 May 16;103(20):7777-82
Chen L, Arora M, Yarlagadda M, Oriss TB, Krishnamoorthy N, Ray A, Ray P. Distinct responses of lung and spleen dendritic cells to the TLR9 agonist CpG oligodeoxynucleotide. J Immunol. 2006 Aug 15;177(4):2373-83.
Arora M, Munoz E, Tenner AJ. Identification of a site on mannan-binding lectin critical for enhancement of phagocytosis. J Biol Chem. 2001 Nov 16;276(46):43087-94.