The genetics behind immune system variation

Golden Pipette won by Steffie Junius

Congratulations to Steffie Junius, the first PhD student to win the Golden Pipette!

Dr Carly Whyte had to relucantly hand over the Golden Pipette to Steffie Junius, in recognition of her pioneering experiments on regulatory T cell fate-mapping.

This means the Golden Pipette will stay in Leuven for now, but the Babraham Team is building up to take back the pipette in 2019!

Celebrating 10 years of the Liston lab!

FWO funding for Prof Susan Schlenner

Congratulations to Prof Susan Schlenner who secured FWO funding today for a four year project on regulatory T cells! FWO is highly competitive and it is very rare for an applicant to be successfully funded on their first independent application. A sign of future success!

Topics we work on

Unlocking The Secrets Of A Rare Immune Disease

by Adrian Liston and Josselyn Garcia-Perez 

Primary immunodeficiencies (PID) are a heterogeneous group of disorders that disturb the host’s immunity, creating susceptibility to infections. PIDs are genetically diverse, with mutations in many different genes capable of causing immunodeficiency. The clinical symptoms of PIDs include, but are not limited to, susceptibility to infections, inflammation, and autoimmunity, although each gene mutated, and indeed each individual mutation, can lead to different manifestations.

Central to understanding PIDs is to understand which immune cell type is rendered defective by the mutation the patient carries. The type of infections the patient develops is often a key indicator of the underlying immunodeficiency; for example, pulmonary infections and bacterial septicemia are associated with B cell defect, whereas fungal susceptibility is associated with defects in certain types of T cells. Candidate pathways can be investigated using genetics and immune screening, and successful identification of the underlying causes allows a treatment program to be tailored to the patient.

Read the full story on Science Trends

The journals we publish in

Rethinking definitions of autoimmune disease

Why autoimmune diseases should be redefined by molecular pathway

By Lauren Martz, senior writer

 

The autoimmune field is dialing up its search for better biomarkers as it seeks to make the next step change from the targeted therapiesthat overtook blanket immunosuppressants. The question is whether autoimmunity might follow the lead of oncology and classify indications by molecular drivers rather than the symptoms or tissues involved... (read the full article).

 

From Biocentury Innovations

My coauthors

Meet the lab: Team Schlenner