Listeria monocytogenes is a Gram-positive, facultatively intracellular bacterium. It causes severe infections both in animals and human. The rate of infection is highest among infants, elderly people, pregnant women and immune-suppressed individuals. Contaminated food (including raw milk, soft cheese, salmons) is a source for sporadic outbreaks of listeriosis. Listeria monocytogenes has special life style, which enables it to escape from phagosomes into the cytosol of a cell.

One of the important clinical features of listeriosis is infection of the central nervous system (CNS). Listeria monocytogenes has special tropism to brain. The listeria encephalitis in sheep is called “circling disease”. The neurological lesions are usually confined to the brainstem where the inflammatory cell infiltrates and bacteria are most prevalent in areas corresponding to the sensory trigeminal nuclei. In adult humans, a listeria encephalitis involving the brainstem, rhombencephalitis, has been described. The infection foci in the brainstem can be visualized with MRI. The associated mortality is high and survivors are usually left with serious sequelae.

It has been suggested that the listeric encephalitis in sheep results from axonal transport of the bacteria along one or more branches of the trigeminal nerve to the brainstem. In spite of the great clinical importance of Listeria monocytogenes infections in the nervous system, its pathogenesis is still unclear. Our project is aim to study mechanisms for retrograde axonal spread of Listeria monocytogenes  to the CNS and how the host innate and adaptive immune response may control the spread. The experiments are performed both in vivo and in vitro.