The team enjoyed a fantastic Christmas dinner, filled with delicious food and great company. The Secret Santa exchange was a huge hit, bringing plenty of smiles and surprises. Thanks Santa! 🎅
Tamara succesfully obtained the degree of Doctor in Health Sciences.
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Our single cell and spatial atlas of the developing human thymus is now out in Nature as part of the Human Cell Atlas paper collection.
The atlas comes with a vast resource of tools and data. You can explore the Visium spatial transcriptomics and scRNA-seq data on cellxgene. Also check out our Shiny app for interactive visualisation of our thymocyte CITE-seq data.
Silke studies the early stages of T-cell development, with an emphasis on understanding both functional roles and spatial organization.
Jeffrey is working on the optimization of CAR T cell differentiation from human iPSCs as part of the NOVISTEM project.
The team had a great couple of days in the "Muziekbos" in Ronse. Muddy hikes, highland games and great food!
During the annual UGent Research Day, Tamara showcased her findings about the essential role of HES6 during human hematopoiesis and it controlling lineage-specific proliferation and differentiation.
Read the published article in Haematologica here.
Two times a year, our department of Diagnostic Sciences organizes a science afternoon. Lena closed the afternoon showcasing her amazing work for the spatial thymus atlas. Read the preprint here
The team enjoyed a delicious Indian dinner at Mission Masala in Ghent. A great experience to end the year!
In the context of the Human Cell Atlas Thymus Seed Network ​​​we collaborated with the labs of Sarah Teichmann (Wellcome Sanger Institute) and Ron Germain (NIAID, NIH) to generate a spatial atlas of human thymus development. We established a novel common coordinate framework to allow the robust and quantiative mapping of thymic cells across donors, ages and even technologies. By combining this with a comprehensive single cell reference data set, spatial transcriptomics and multiplex protein imaging, we were able to show that the canonical T cell maturation trajectory is established remarkably early in fetal development, whereas the niches of thymic epithelial cell progenitors differ between pre- and postnatal thymus. Moreover, through integration of an extensive CITE-seq data set with spatial information, we found that CD8 and CD4 lineage thymocytes show distinct chemokine receptor profiles and migration kinetics throughout their maturation. Read all about it on our preprint on bioRxiv​ or check the corresponding twitter thread for a digested summary. Many thanks to all the co-authors!
Michaela aims to unravel the role of GATA3 in early T cell development as well as the potential contribution of GATA3 mutations to the emergence of early T cell precursor-acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ETP-ALL).
For the second time the Single Cell Network Ghent (SING) organised a superb event to bring together single cell enthusiasts across faculties and institutes. We got to hear the recent advances in wet and dry lab approaches for the multimodal and spatial profiling of single cells from experts in the field including Britta Velten, Marek Bartosovic, Chris Marine and Yuriy Baglaenko. In addition, PhD students and postdocs from a multitude of labs were able to showcase their work in short talks and posters - Lena presented a snippet of our collaboration with the Teichmann and Germain labs, in which we attempt to profile 'developing T cells in space and time'. An inspiring day with great networking opportunities!​
γδ T cell fans from all over the world gathered in Lisbon on the bautiful campus of the Champalimaud Foundation​ to catch up on the latest research on their favourite immune cells. Fantastic talks and posters, topped off with a scenic boat ride on the river Tagus. We're already looking forward to the 2025 rendition in Toronto!