Events

At this event Dr Amanda Oliver, Postdoctoral Research Fellow from the Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK) will present Decoding mucosal immunity using single cell and spatial transcriptomics.

About Dr Amanda Oliver

Amanda Oliver is a RESPIRE4 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Teichmann lab at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK) where she is interested in studying mucosal immunology at single cell resolution. Her recent work in Nature Genetics identified a novel gland associated immune niche in healthy human airways. She is currently working on the assembly and utilisation of large scale reference atlases of the lung and gastrointestinal tract in order to understand inflammatory diseases. Amanda completed her PhD in lung tumour immunology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre with Professor Michael Kershaw and her BSc Hons at the University of Queensland.

Abstract

Single-cell transcriptomics (scRNAseq) has allowed unprecedented resolution of cell types/states in human tissues. About 120 million cells have been analysed by scRNAseq in the Human Cell Atlas and almost 20% come from mucosal barrier tissues across the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, lung and airways. We have now assembled large scale, organ specific atlases to better understand cell and transcriptional changes in hundreds of individuals, including those with inflammatory and infectious diseases. We integrated 2.2 million cells from the lungs of 444 donors, and 1.6 million cells from the GI tract of 268 donors, revealing disease associated cell types and providing a framework to analyse new data in a broader context. In addition to understanding transcriptomes of suspension cells, we used spatial transcriptomics to analyse the organisation of cells in healthy lung and airway tissue. We discovered and validated a survival niche for IgA plasma cells, mature B cells and CD4 T cells in the airway submucosal glands, with implications for respiratory disease and vaccination. Together, single cell and spatial transcriptomics at scale are powerful tools to enhance our understanding of immunology in health and disease.

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