June 2025: Our latest study, now published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, reports that antimitochondrial autoantibodies—targeting mitochondria-enriched, mesoderm-derived neurons in the gut—can penetrate live, viable cells and disrupt cellular respiration. These findings shed new light on their potential role in the pathogenesis of gastrointestinal dysmotility in autoimmune disease
June 2025: Congratulations Dr. Seika on getting a 3 year BIH grant!!
Feb 2025: Our paper on the detection of mitotic neuroblasts in the adult enteric nervous system - which provides further evidence of steady state neurogenesis is now published in eNeuro.
Sept 2024: Study led by Dr. Trisha Pasricha on mucosal damage increasing risk of developing Parkinson's Disease published in JAMA Network Open. You can access the paper here
Feb 2024: We welcome two new group members - Dr. Philippa Seika for a year-long postdoctoral fellowship funded by the DFG, and Dr. Trisha Pasricha as an Assistant Professor in Medicine to take forth a new direction on translational research in neurodegenerative disorders.
August 2023: Our huge study detailing the discovery of mesodermal-derivation of enteric neurons, and their role in maturation and aging of the ENS is now published at eLife
August 2023: Our brief communication on identifying Gephyrin, a protein expressed by the Enteric Nervous System, as a novel auto-antigen in Scleroderma is now online.
February 2023: Our review on the risk factors, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management of gastrointestinal dysmotility in patients suffering from Systemic Sclerosis is now online. Click here for the pdf version.
November 2022: Our preprint on using simple immunohistochemical methods to observe adult enteric neurogenesis is now online.
August 2021: Our paper on COUNTEN is published in eNeuro. First of our lab!
July 2021: The K-Lab is now funded by a pilot and feasibility grant from the Diacomp initiative, to use artificial intelligence methods and tools to understand pathological changes in gastric tissues of diabetic patients.
July 2021: Our first invited review on "Neurodegenerative disorders and gut-brain interactions" (J Clin Invest. 2021;131(13):e143775. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI143775.) is now published in Journal of Clinical Investigation!
Click here for the pdf version.
January 2021: The K-Lab is now funded through an R01 grant from the National Institute of Aging!
Our pre-print on COUNTEN - the first computer vision-driven software to accurately and rapidly count enteric neurons is up!
Find our latest review on Neuron- Mucosal Innate Immune Crosstalk in gut at
Neuro-innate immune interactions in gut mucosal immunity - ScienceDirect
Our pre-print on novel mesoderm-derived neurons in the adult Enteric Nervous System is up!!
Find it at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.25.262832v1
August 17th 2019: Come to our talk on Adult Enteric Neurogenesis at ANMS 2019 in the windy city Chicago
November 3 - 7th 2018: Catch us at SfN2018 at the mini-symposium on Recent Advances in Enteric Neurobiology
Our review on the SfN2018 mini-symposium is up!