Project

EpiMark: epigenetics of systemic immune cells as biomarker in CVID and for ICI therapy

Code
bof/baf/3y/2025/01/001
Duration
01 January 2025 → 31 December 2026
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Research disciplines
  • Medical and health sciences
    • Bioinformatics data integration and network biology
    • Computational transcriptomics and epigenomics
    • Molecular diagnostics
    • Immunogenetics
Keywords
CVID single cell analysis and integration epigenetics Immune checkpoint inhibitor response
 
Project description

The immune system is highly versatile and changes over time. Immune cell epigenetics plays a critical role in this development. Our research focusses on unraveling the epigenetic modifications that play a role during immune evasion in cancer and in common variable immunodeficiencies (CVID). Our research group is implementing multimodal single cell and bulk omics methods and analysis pipelines to study epigenetic variation, including transcriptomic, chromatin and histone mark changes. In the context of cancer, we aim to see epigenetic differences in systemic immune cells between immune checkpoint inhibitor responders and non-responders. On the other hand, in the CVID cohort we want to link epigenetic differences with the clinical phenotype. Understanding the epigenetic landscape of immune cells offers thus potential for developing novel biomarkers and therapeutic strategies in multiple disseases.