The main aim of our research is to understand the function of intracellular signalling pathways in the pathogenesis of inflammatory and degenerative diseases. For these studies, we have chosen the mouse as our in vivo experimental system for two reasons. First, current technology allows the manipulation of the mouse genome with nucleotide precision making the mouse an excellent system to study gene function in vivo. Second, many human diseases can be modelled in the mouse allowing its use as an experimental model to study mechanisms of disease pathogenesis. By combining genetic manipulation with modelling of human diseases in the mouse, we can study the role of genes and pathways in the mechanisms leading to disease initiation and progression.

We employ ‘state of the art’ technology in mouse genetics to manipulate in a cell-specific manner the activity of distinct signalling pathways. Over the last years our work focused on studying the function of the IKK/NF-kB pathway using conditional targeting of IKK subunits. More recently, we have generated mouse models allowing us to dissect the different signalling cascades downstream of cell-surface receptors belonging to the TNF or the TLR/IL-1 receptor superfamilies. Current work in the lab investigates the role of such signalling cascades in skin development and inflammation, in central nervous system inflammatory disease, in liver inflammation and cancer, and in inflammatory bowel disease.

Manolis Pasparakis studied Biology at the University of Athens. He received his PhD from the University of Athens in 1997 for work he did at the Hellenic Pasteur Institute on the in vivo function of TNF by generating TNF knockout mice. From 1997 till 2001 he continued his studies as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Genetics in Cologne, where he established conditional mouse models to study the function of the IKK/NF-kB pathway. Between 2002 and 2005 he worked as a Group Leader at the EMBL Mouse Biology Unit in Rome and during this time his group focused on studying the in vivo role of intracellular signaling pathways in disease pathogenesis. In October 2005 he was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Mouse Genetics and Inflammation at the Institute for Genetics.