Innate and Adaptive Immunity in Psychiatry: Insights From Genetic Association Studies and Peripheral Blood Immunphenotyping
Status: This talk is in preparation - details may change
Status: This talk has been cancelled
There is increasing evidence that the immune system is involved in multiple psychiatric disorders, at least in a subset of patients. I will outline our work using functional enrichment analyses to prioritise the immune cell subsets involved in cross-disorder genetic risk, highlighting a causal role for adaptive immunity (B and T cells) across multiple disorders. Activated T cells were particularly implicated, suggesting a potential mechanism by which environmental risks (e.g. stress or infection) might stimulate T cells to unmask the effects of psychiatric risk variants. I will also discuss our previous and ongoing work using peripheral blood immunophenotyping (cytometry, bulk transcriptomics and single cell sequencing) to characterise the immune landscape in depression and psychosis, and future directions. I will consider the convergence and divergence of signals from genetic and biomarker studies, and discuss the implications of these two strands of work for pathogenesis and precision treatment in psychiatry.

To attend via Zoom, please use the joining details below:

zoom.us/j/98643323773?pwd=bL0TW4vweAlQzIlL5VEFHKYiEaVYPl.1
Meeting ID: 986 4332 3773
Passcode: 758174
Date: 12 November 2024, 9:30 (Tuesday, 5th week, Michaelmas 2024)
Venue: Department of Psychiatry, Headington OX3 7JX
Venue Details: Seminar Room
Speaker: Dr Mary-Ellen Lynall (Cambridge University)
Organising department: Department of Psychiatry
Organiser: Rania Elgarf (Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: rania.elgarf@psych.ox.ac.uk
Host: Prof Naomi Wray (University of Oxford)
Part of: Psychiatry Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Rania Elgarf