Athena Cavounidis
DPhil Student
I am a DPhil student in Holm Uhlig's lab investigating anti-microbial pathways in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). I studied Biochemistry and quickly became captivated by the field of immunology, leading me to pursue an MSc in Integrated Immunology. The complexity of IBD enthralled me and I therefore embarked upon my current DPhil project focused on a monogenic disorder that presents with IBD-like inflammation, namely Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome (HPS). HPS patients have defects in the biogenesis of lysosome-related organelles, and we are trying to identify and characterize the pathways involved in order to elucidate the etiology of IBD in these patients.
Recent publications
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Immunodeficiency, autoimmune thrombocytopenia and enterocolitis caused by autosomal recessive deficiency of PIK3CD-encoded phosphoinositide 3-kinase δ
Journal article
Swan DJ. et al, (2019), Haematologica, 104, e483 - e486
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Crohn’s Disease in Niemann–Pick Disease Type C1: Caught in the Cross-Fire of Host-Microbial Interactions
Journal article
Cavounidis A. and Uhlig HH., (2018), Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 63, 811 - 813