An Immunological investigation of Meniere's disease

Project Summary/Abstract In this proposal we hope to build on our efforts showing innate and adaptive immune cell infiltration of labyrinthine tissue in Meniere’s disease. These findings have led us to propose an autoimmune basis for the disease. Our efforts will be directed at confirming our preliminary data that specific pathways including druggable TNF alpha and mTOR pathways are upregulated in Meniere’s disease and establishing that labyrinth infiltrating B cells are autoreactive. We hope that our work will lead to better understanding and rational therapeutics of this poorly understood disease.