“Towards Systems-Level Understanding of Immune Cell-Cell Communication and Inflammatory Tissue Environments: Applications in HIV” 

Kelly Arnold, Ph.D.*
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Seminar will be made available via videoconference in the Health Sciences Research Building, room E 182 and Technology Enterprise Park, room 104, also on your computer at http://vidyo.bme.gatech.edu.

Complex networks of immune cell interactions play a pivotal role in infectious disease, wound healing, autoimmune disease, drug toxicity, cardiovascular disease, and success of regenerative medicine endeavors.  Our current understanding of immune function is largely limited to individual cell types, generally lacking contextual considerations of the broader network of cell-cell interactions in tissues that collectively drive physiological behavior.  Our inability to combat HIV and other complex emerging pathogens with traditional single-target approaches highlight our limited understanding of immune function and motivate shifting from the current univariate paradigm to a multivariate “many components at once”, or systems concept for design of new strategies based on systems-level properties of immune function.  We employ an integrative approach based on models and measurements made from systems of human cells and tissues to gain new insight into immune cell-cell interaction networks in tissue environments.  Specifically, we have used data-driven modeling approaches to reveal novel multivariate cellular and molecular immune response relationships driving immune function in HIV,  including 1) alterations in cytokine communication networks of HIV-infected individuals that are independent of CD4+ T cell depletion;  2) complex tissue environments associated with HIV susceptibility in the female genital tract; and 3) multivariate cytokine profiles that promote production of neutralizing antibodies.  We believe these approaches can be easily translated to provide a fresh and useful perspective in a broad range of healthcare applications, and used to generate new principles for therapeutic strategies and diagnostic tools based on systems-level properties of immune function. 

Faculty Host: Manu Platt, Ph.D.