Work was conducted via 5 work packages (WPs). Work packages 1 and 2 comprised research tasks where the fellow along with the students he supervised generated single cell multi-omic tissue maps from colonic biopsies of actively inflamed tissue from Ulcerative Colitis patients and compared them to non-involved tissue from UC patients and also Healthy controls. In WP2, many of the observations from WP1 were validated using techniques such as multi-colour immunohistochemistry, imaging mass cytometry, and carrying out in-vitro assays using patient derived colonic organoids.
WP3 comprised of tasks that are associated with training for all of the techniques that are utilised in WP1 & 2. In WP3, the fellow also sought to hone his skills on academic leadership, grant writing and presentations skills. He also regularly supervised two Ph.D. students and one masters student.
WP4 comprised of tasks associated with communication and outreach. The fellow’s work was presented as a poster at the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation conference in 2021 and a talk at the MRC Human Immunology Unit research day 2021 in Oxford, UK. He gave an invited talk at the International Symposium on Biomedicine and Biomaterials (ISBB 2022) organised by the Biomedical Research Center, Northwest Minzu University, China. He also gave two annual research seminars at the Gastroenterology Department of the host institute. Outreach was done to University Masters in Nanobiology students at TU Delft where the fellow presented his work as an invited speaker for their course on single cell RNA sequencing. He also took part in a live webinar organized by Abbvie, and presented a talk titled, “Etiology of post-operative recurrence in Crohn’s Disease” held on 31st May 2023. Lastly, he also invited a high school student to spend 20 weeks in the lab. Results of the MSCA will be reported in two publications, one of which, related to UC is already under review at an open access journal, while the second manuscript (related to CD) is under preparation.
In WP5, the fellow’s progress was tracked via regular meetings with his host supervisor with weekly meetings and quarterly progress evaluations. Furthermore, he also had 5 meetings which were specifically focussed on the fellow’s career development. During this project, the fellow has developed new collaborations and successfully co-applied to various grants, such as the ECCO Pioneer grant (300K) and the NWO-KWO grant (750k) to carry out similar work in IBD and cancer.
