Immunological health relies on a balance between the ability to mount an immune response against potential pathogens and tolerance to self. We are working on deciphering how the adaptive immune system can be used as diagnostics and therapeutics. Defects in the ability to mount effective immune responses lead to infectious disease susceptibility, impaired surveillance of cancer and immunodeficiencies, whereas a breakdown of immunological tolerance causes autoimmune diseases.
Here, I will describe novel methods using multi-omics datasets, imaging and functional experiments to dissect the role and defects in immune cells across several disease areas. We show how shared mechanisms that are disrupted across diseases, and the implications on function and heterogeneity of B and T cells.
We determine the nature of B and T cell immuno-surveillance, regulation and activation across diseases, as well as the immunological features associated with better prognosis and immunomodulation.