Virginia Pedicord and her team are working to identify the role of intestinal microbiota in immune responses and pathogen resistance.
Biography
Virginia Pedicord received her PhD in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis from Cornell University under the supervision of Dr. James P. Allison at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. There she studied how CD8+ T cell survival, differentiation and function in vivo are shaped by activation in the contexts of IL-10 inhibition, immune checkpoint blockade and metabolic manipulation. She went on to complete her postdoctoral training at the Rockefeller University, where she began investigating the role of the gut microbiota in T cell-mediated immunity and intestinal barrier function, before joining the University of Cambridge Department of Medicine and Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Disease (CITIID) as a Sir Henry Dale Fellow in 2018. She is interested in how interactions with gut microbes and microbial metabolites affect resistance to infection, local and systemic T cell responses and the gut-brain axis of neuronal function.
Research
The human gastrointestinal tract houses the largest population of lymphocytes in the human body as well as a tremendous number of resident microbes, collectively known as the microbiota, that supports numerous aspects of host health, including metabolism, immune development and pathogen resistance. However, the mechanisms involved in key interactions remain largely unknown.
Intestinal dysbiosis, disruption of bacterial diversity in the gut, can result from antibiotic use or pathogenic infection and has been strongly linked to increased disease susceptibility. This dysbiosis-induced susceptibility indicates that normal commensal bacteria are capable of preventing disease; however, mechanisms involved in key host-microbiota interactions are still largely unknown.
The Pedicord Lab seeks mechanistic insights into the influence of commensal microbes on host intestinal and systemic physiology and immune responses. These fundamental insights will give us a better understanding of infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders and cancer, enabling the development of new approaches to enhance therapies and combat disease. Using functional metagenomics, in vivo models, cellular immunology, transcriptomics and proteomics, we identify the cellular and molecular targets of gut microbiota-mediated modifications of host immunity. Our multi-disciplinary mechanistic approach allows us to characterise the complex interactions between the commensal microbial community, intestinal epithelium and adaptive immune cells both during homeostasis and the perturbations of disease.
Publications
1. Identification of gut microbial species linked with disease variability in a widely used mouse model of colitis (2022). Samuel C. Forster, Simon Clare, Benjamin S. Beresford-Jones, Katherine Harcourt, George Notley, Mark D. Stares, Nitin Kumar, Amelia T. Soderholm, Anne Adoum, Hannah Wong, Bélen Morón, Cordelia Brandt, Gordon Dougan, David J. Adams, Kevin J. Maloy, Virginia A Pedicord, Trevor D Lawley. Nature Microbiology.
2. The Mouse Gastrointestinal Bacteria Catalogue enables translation between the mouse and human gut microbiotas via functional mapping (2021). Benjamin S Beresford-Jones, Samuel C Forster, Mark D Stares, George Notley, Elisa Viciani, Hilary P Browne, Daniel J Boehmler, Amelia T Soderholm, Nitin Kumar, Kevin Vervier, Justin R Cross, Alexandre Almeida, Trevor D Lawley, Virginia A Pedicord. Cell Host & Microbe.
3. Site-specific acylation of a bacterial virulence regulator attenuates infection (2020). Zhenrun J. Zhang, Virginia A. Pedicord, Tao Peng, Howard C. Hang. Nature Chemical Biology.
4. Intestinal epithelial cells: at the interface of the microbiota and mucosal immunity (2019). Amelia T. Soderholm, Virginia A. Pedicord. Immunology.
5. Enterococcus faecium secreted antigen A generates muropeptides to enhance host immunity and limit bacterial pathogenesis (2019). Byungchul Kim, Yen-Chih Wang, Charles W Hespen, Juliel Espinosa, Jeanne Salje, Kavita J Rangan, Deena A Oren, Jin Young Kang, Virginia A Pedicord, Howard C. Hang. Elife.
6. Intestinal epithelial and intraepithelial T cell crosstalk mediates a dynamic response to infection (2017). David P Hoytema van Konijnenburg, Bernardo S Reis, Virginia A Pedicord, Julia Farache, Gabriel D Victora, Daniel Mucida. Cell.
7. Exploiting a host-commensal interaction to promote intestinal barrier function and enteric pathogen tolerance (2016). Virginia A Pedicord, Ainsley A. K. Lockhart, Kavita J. Rangan, Jeffrey W. Craig, Jakob Loschko, Aneta Rogoz, Howard C. Hang, Daniel Mucida. Science Immunology.
8. A secreted bacterial peptidoglycan hydrolase enhances tolerance to enteric pathogens (2016). Kavita J Rangan, Virginia A Pedicord, Yen-Chih Wang, Byungchul Kim, Yun Lu, Shai Shaham, Daniel Mucida, Howard C Hang. Science.
