0:00
First of all, I would like
to thank the organizers
for choosing me
and inviting me to participate
in the HSTalks lecture series.
This is a great honor for me.
My name is Farzin
Mashreghi and I lead
the therapeutic gene
regulation group
at the German Rheumatism
Research Centre in Berlin.
In this role, I
am applying state
of the art single-cell
technologies to decipher
potentially disregulated
adaptive immune responses
in usually chronic inflammatory
rheumatic diseases.
0:34
I have chosen an example
project for this lecture today
in which we unveiled the role
of the cytokine host
factor TGF-Beta
in the pathogenesis
of severe COVID-19.
Here, we use the very
sophisticated sorting
and single cell sequencing
approach in which we
studied immune responses
longitudinally
after SARS COVID-2 infection.
We studied that in a way
that we analyze one
cell at a time.
1:04
Understanding how our
immune system functions
is difficult because of the
many different cell types
and biomolecules involved
and because of its
extremely dynamic nature.
It is in constant
co-evolution with pathogens
and must respond rapidly
and specifically
in each individual
to a vast variety of
potential threats.
We have more than 100
immune cell subsets
expressing more than 100
cytokines and chemokines,
more than 350 surface proteins,
and more than 1,000 genes in
different constellations.
To make it even
more complicated,
T and B cells of the
adaptive immune system
express more than 10 million
different antigen receptors.
These immune cells also interact
in different constellations.
Conventional analysis,
for example flow
cytometry based analysis,
is very biased and limited
to the availability
of specific antibodies
and reagents.
