The immune system is a complex, dynamic and plastic networkcomposed of various interacting cell types that are constantly sensing andresponding to environmental cues. From very early on, the immunology field hasinvested great efforts to characterize the various immune cell types andelucidate their functions. However, accumulating evidence indicates thatcurrent technologies and classification schemes are limited in their ability toaccount for the functional heterogeneity of immune processes. Single cellgenomics hold the potential to revolutionize the way we characterize compleximmune cell assemblies and study their spatial organization, dynamics, clonaldistribution, pathways, and crosstalk. This emerging field can greatly affectbasic and translational research of the immune system. I will discuss howrecent single cell genomic studies are changing our perspective of variousimmune related pathologies from cancer to autoimmune disease and neurodegeneration.Finally, I will consider recent and forthcoming technological and analyticaladvances in single cell genomics and their huge potential impact on the futureof immunology research and immunotherapy.
Host: Sagi Levy
