Project description
Understanding human tissue-resident T helper cells
T helper cells play a crucial role in immune defence, but can contribute to conditions such as autoimmunity and allergies when dysregulated. Most research focuses on the small population of T cells in the blood, resulting in systemic immunomodulatory drugs that lack tissue specificity and fail to cure chronic inflammatory diseases. The ERC-funded ORGANise-T project aims to investigate the dynamic compartmentalisation of human tissue-resident T helper cells across time and space. Using multi-organ tissue samples from surgical patients and individuals who have undergone allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT), the project will track T cell entry and exit in matched organs through single-cell chimerism analysis. By combining advanced technologies with high-throughput cell culture methods, this approach supports the development of tissue-specific immunotherapies.
Objective
T helper cells represent a heterogeneous population of immune cells that are critical for host defense and, if dysregulated, for pathologies such as autoimmunity and allergy. T cell responses take place in peripheral tissues. Yet, insights into their identity and regulation stem almost exclusively from investigations of circulating blood, which comprises only 2% of the total human T cell population. Accordingly, current immunomodulatory drugs act systemically, but lack tissue specificity. Despite progress in the temporary suppression of chronic inflammatory diseases, they still fail to be curative. This project aims to address this unmet medical need by generating fundamental insights into the dynamic compartmentalisation of human tissue resident T helper cells across space and time.
I have established a surgical patient cohort for the collection of multi-organ tissue samples and a cohort of patients after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) that enables tracking T cell tissue entry and exit over time in matched organs by single-cell chimerism analysis. Using multimodal state-of-the-art technologies and specialised high-throughput cell culture methodologies in these two unique patient cohorts, the project will dissect 1) the phenotypic, functional and transcriptional identity and molecular regulation of human resident T helper cells across tissues, 2) the compartmentalisation of their antigen specificities across tissues, 3) the dynamics of tissue entry, persistence and exit for distinct T helper cell types in space and time, and will then 4) exploit chimeric host/donor T cell-tracking to gain novel insights into the cellular and molecular pathways underlying graft-versus-host disease. Overall, ORGANise-T will establish first-of-its-kind insights into the spatio-temporal dynamic organisation of human T cell immunity in tissues. This will bring the next generation of immunotherapies to the level of tissue specificity.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pathology
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine allergology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine immunology immunotherapy
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine transplantation
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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07745 JENA
Germany
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