The laboratory of Developmental Neuroimmunobiology is a research group that combines stem cell technologies, genome editing, state-of-the-art imaging and genomic techniques to understand human brain development in health and disease, with a focus on neuroimmune regulation.

 

Over the past years, the immune system has been increasingly recognized as key player in brain development and physiology, and its activation has been linked to many brain pathologies, ranging from autoimmune conditions, brain cancer to neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. To envision the possibility to effectively target neuroimmune dysfunction to cure brain diseases, we are using three dimensional human tissues that recapitulate human brain development - called organoids- to identify drivers of immune activation and to understand how immune activation contributes to neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disease.

 

We are applying human brain organoids, fluorescent reporters, immune challenge experiments (such as viruses or cytokines like interferons), gene editing with imaging and transcriptomic approaches to examine immune signalling dynamics in human organoids and changes in differentiation trajectories. In parallel, we are developing tools to study immune activation and new strategies to engineer organoids with a functional immune system to better mimic neuroimmune processes in a dish.