James (Jamie) Walsh, MD, PhD, is a fellowship-trained uveitis clinician with a scientific program studying ocular inflammation. In his graduate school studies with Jonathan Kipnis at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, he explored the role of the adaptive immune system in the response to traumatic spinal cord injury and optic nerve injury. His work demonstrated that adaptive-immune system–mediated neuroprotection was dependent on interleukin-4 but independent of the interactions between major histocompatability complex II and T cell receptors that typically drive adaptive immune responses.
Dr. Walsh went on to complete an ophthalmology residency at the University of California, San Diego, and a fellowship in uveitis and ocular immunology at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins. His current project as a postdoctoral fellow demonstrates that the choroid receives antigen drainage from the vitreous space and is a major site of lymphocyte activation during mouse models of autoimmune uveitis. As Dr. Walsh transitions from his postdoctoral work to a faculty position, he plans to continue to study the mechanisms by which the eye interfaces with the adaptive immune system both locally in secondary lymphoid organs and throughout the rest of the body, with the goal of uncovering targetable pathways that can be used to treat human uveitis.