Recipient: Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich
Funding: GO-Bio initial conceptual phase 4  (01/10/2023 to 30/09/2024, EUR 120,000.00)

Project description:

Immune cells secrete signalling proteins (cytokines) after activation by foreign bodies or pathogens. This process, known as the immune response, is heterogeneous and only a fraction of the total immune cells contribute to the response. In order to better understand this process, an immune response assay (ira for short) consisting of a single-cell chip, detection material and AI-based evaluation software is being developed in this project. ira should make it possible to perform parallelised measurements of the secretion of many individual cells resolved over time. Measuring the response of individual cells is an advantage over current standard methods, which can only measure the average immune response of a cell population. In addition, ira will be able to collect image data and thus make it possible to assign morphological changes and the amount of protein secreted. The technique can contribute to the elucidation of the mechanisms of the cellular immune response and can be used to measure the activity of genetically manipulated immune cells in immunotherapy. During the exploratory phase relevant exploitation options for ira will be identified and the founding team will be completed.