Melanie Scott, MD, PhD

Dr. Scott's research interests involve investigating innate immune responses after surgery, trauma, hemorrhagic shock and infection. Her main research focus is the role of the inflammasome and inflammatory caspases on cell death and survival pathways during surgery and trauma. This work centers on the elucidation of novel pathways of inflammasome activation and function in the liver, and how mitochondria are central to these responses in both sterile and infectious tissue injury. She is also very interested in the different ways inflammasomes are activated in multiple cell types in a cell type-specific manner and how these varying responses help coordinate inflammatory responses to host stress and infection. She is also working on a project that investigates the role of pattern recognition receptors, danger signals and inflammasomes in models of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Dr. Scott has multiple collaborations with other PIs in the department, within the university and also at other institutions, which allows her to work on the role of inflammasomes in varying model systems such as tick-borne Ehrlichia infection (a collaboration with Dr. Nahed Ismail in the Department of Pathology), and sickle cell disease (a collaboration with Dr. Prithu Sundd in the Vascular Medicine Insititute).