The subject of my thesis is the study of the interactions between the intestinal epithelial (IEC) and immune cells (IIC) in the jejunum before and after bariatric surgery.
Obesity is known to be associated with chronic low grade inflammation, very well defined in the adipose tissue but less in the intestines.
It has been seen that there are many interactions between the IEC and the IIC in the gut more precisely, the intraepithelial immune lymphocytes (IEL). Those interactions are observed in humans with obesity and can worsen the inflammation in the gut.
Nowadays, the more effective treatment against obesity is bariatric surgery that allows a rapid weight loss and a stop to type 2 diabetes. We believe that the interactions described earlier are modified by bariatric surgery and that those modifications could be implicated in the beneficial effects of bariatric surgery.
We already observed on human jejunum slides that there is a decrease of IEL after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB). We want to phenotype those cells with flow cytometry thanks to human fresh jejunum that are going under bariatric surgery and thanks to a rat model developed in the lab that will allow us to investigate further the mechanisms of bariatric surgery and the intestinal immune system.