Lindell Laboratory

Sepsis, the syndrome of life-threatening organ dysfunction due to infection, is the leading cause of death of hospitalized children worldwide. Although sepsis is defined by a dysregulated host response to infection, our ability to discriminate adaptive and maladaptive immune response is limited. In most serious infections, there exists a complex interplay between pathogen-induced tissue injury, pathogen-directed host inflammation, and injury resulting from host immune activation. This immunologic complexity has hampered efforts to develop targeted pharmacotherapy for sepsis in children and adults.

The Lindell Lab is focused on leveraging translational immunology to define “treatable traits” in pediatric sepsis patients which can inform novel approaches to precision immunomodulation.

Circulating blood cells serve as a window to the immune response and reflect both innate and adaptive immune programs. Our translational immunology laboratory leverages several immune profiling techniques –spectral flow cytometry, plasma proteomics, metabolic characterization, and single-cell RNA sequencing – to identify associations between patterns of immune response and both short- and long-term sepsis outcomes. We also follow patients longitudinally, from onset of organ failure through recovery, to identify time-varying covariates associated with favorable outcomes.

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