What ignites gut inflammation?

Project synopsis: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a common, complex and chronic disease that can cause abdominal pain, bleeding and diarrhoea. Advanced therapies often visibly heal the bowel and achieve periods of remission, however despite this, many patients eventually relapse. This clinical pattern suggests that “invisible” drivers of IBD persist, even during periods of remission. This project will use advanced spatial technologies to identify these invisible drivers of disease. The over-arching goal of this work is to help achieve deeper remission and improve the quality-of-life for patients with IBD. Project in more detail: Our team recently discovered a new form of inflammation that arises in patients with IBD who are in remission (Pang & Al-Ani et al., 2026 Science). This project involved collecting over 900 intestinal biopsies from 80 patients with or without IBD and performing in-depth molecular analyses on these biopsies. This project will pair markers of nascent inflammation with advanced spatial ‘omic technologies to identify the upstream drivers of gut damage in patients with IBD. Specifically, this project will answer the fundamental question: What feature distinguishes an inflamed niche from uninflamed tissue a few cells away in the same IBD patient? And is this distinguishing pro-inflammatory feature sufficient to activate immune cells? Key techniques: • laser-capture microdissection • mass spectrometry-based proteomics • metatranscriptomics • advanced bioinformatic analyses • human cell culture Supervisory team: • Dr Andre Samson – Head of the Gut Inflammation Laboratory at the Centre for Inflammatory Diseases (Monash University) • Dr Maria Tanzer – Laboratory Head at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, specialising in mass spectrometry-based proteomics • Dr Michael Christie – Molecular and Anatomical Pathologist and Deputy Director of Pathology at the Royal Melbourne Hospital Related work from the team: • Pang & Al-Ani et al., (2026) Science • Chiou et al., (2026) Cell Death & Differentiation • Chiou & Al-Ani et al., (2024) EMBO Molecular Medicine