The One in a Million Podcast
from Novartis Canada Medical Affairs
The explosion of research into autoinflammatory disorders – conversation with Dr Dilan Dissanayake
You last listened March 29, 2021
Despite some autoinflammatory disorders being in the literature for at least 2000 years, you can almost give this field of birthday of 1997 when two groups discovered the gene causing FMF (MEFV). Simultaneously, parts of the innate immune system, like TLRs and inflammasomes were discovered. The world of genetics and immunology collided when it was realized the MEFV gene encodes for the pyrin inflammasome, linking it all to IL-1 and the world of autoinflammatory research really took off!
Dr. Dilan Dissanayake is a pediatric rheumatologist in the Autoinflammatory Disease Clinic at the Hospital for Sick Children. In addition to caring for patients with these rare conditions, he applies his Ph.D. training in Immunology to take patient samples into the lab and gain a better understanding of the cellular and molecular processes that contribute to their diseases. He is currently involved in studies to identify rare genetic variants in patients with undiagnosed autoinflammatory conditions, and to use cutting edge approaches to dissect the cellular activation pathways that these variants affect. His work has led to publications in a variety of high-impact journals, and he was the recent recipient of a highly competitive research funding award to continue these explorations.
Our host, Dr. Michelle Batthish (Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics' Division of Rheumatology at McMaster University) invites you to listen into the first episode of the first series of the One in a Million Podcast, which will serve as a background and introduction into the world of autoinflammation. In this episode, she sits down with Dr. Dilan Dissanayake where they explore of world of genetic research.