MSCA Fellow in the field of Immunology and cellular immunotherapy
- Your supervisor for your research through training project will be Jelka Pohar, and here is link to her references:
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7616-164X
Autoimmune diseases affect approximately 7.6–9.4 % of the world's adult population, with young and middle-aged women being affected more frequently than men. Standard first-line therapies include general immunosuppressants, which are often associated with adverse side effects and incomplete efficacy. Even with treatment, most autoimmune diseases gradually deteriorate patients' health, resulting in a reduced quality of life and a significant burden on the public health system.
Patients therefore need targeted, safe, and effective therapies that eliminate or reduce dependence on immunosuppressive drugs, restore the immune response and possibly stimulate tissue repair. Modulation of the immune system through immunotherapies with autologous, genetically engineered immune cells is at the forefront of several paradigm-changing therapeutic approaches for the treatment of severe diseases for which there are limited or no therapeutic options.
In the context of adoptive cell therapies for autoimmune diseases, one of the promising approaches is the utilisation of regulatory T cells (Treg), which are one of the most important immune cells responsible for homeostasis and peripheral tolerance. Therefore, our and other efforts aim to manipulate Treg cells with transgenic T cell receptors (TCR) or CAR to make them specific for target antigens and tissues, thus increasing efficacy and persistence in target tissues while limiting off-target effects.
The candidate will be able to study Treg cell biology and establish a platform for genetic manipulation and assessment of cellular products and their complexity using multicolour spectral flow cytometry as well as state-of-the-art single-cell next-generation RNA sequencing methods that enable in-depth analysis of the transcriptome. We aim to introduce these techniques into the cellular product assessment platform and discover new elements that contribute to the suppressive function of Treg cells. We are interested in expanding our group with a postdoctoral researcher with an interest in immunology and experience in bioinformatics, ideally with RNA sequencing.
