Norwegian Society for Immunology (NSI)

In our next NSI Rising Star Seminar, we will be hosting Klaus Eyer (PhD, associate professor, Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University) with a talk on “The Many Functions of individual Immune Cells:  Exploring Polyfunctionality and Polyspecificity on the single-B cell level”. Look forward to seeing you there!

Meeting details:
Speaker: Klaus Eyer
Title: The Many Functions of individual Immune Cells:  Exploring Polyfunctionality and Polyspecificity on the single-B cell level
Time and date: Thursday, June 19 at 14:00
Meeting link: https://uio.zoom.us/j/61981540552

Talk abstract:
Immune responses are driven by various individual cells acting without central coordination. Each cell contributes distinct functions that dynamically adapt, and the collective behavior ultimately shapes the immune outcome. Indeed, single-cell analysis can advance our understanding of these responses with the necessary resolution. While single-cell analysis has advanced significantly in proteomics, genomics and transcriptomics, these approaches only partially reflect actual cellular function and activity. Therefore, our laboratory is working on developing systems to quantify, apply and use individual cellular functions in fundamental questions and clinical applications to unlock their full transformative and translational potential.
During this presentation, we will discuss two very recent, not yet published studies from our laboratory. The first focuses on polyfunctionality of individual B cells, and its temporality – the ability of cells to secrete multiple, distinct proteins either sequentially or simultaneously, and the potential impacts of temporality on function. The second focuses on a new technique that analyzes individual antibodies for their potential to be polyreactive. Indeed, current technologies with single-antibody resolution typically measure binding to only one or a few recombinant antigens, often ignoring specificity and polyreactivity as parameters. We present a method for screening antibody repertoires at single-antibody resolution against a large library of protein variants, using SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD) mutants to identify the antigenic spectrum of rare, polyreactive antibodies. Using multiplexed antigen sequencing, we performed mutational scanning, enrichment, and escape analysis to map epitopes of the sum and individual polyreactive antibodies within the immunization-generated antibody repertoire.

More information about Klaus Eyer:
Dr. Klaus Eyer has been an associate professor at the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University since February 2024. He has a background in pharmaceutical sciences and earned his doctorate in Bioanalytics from ETH Zurich, and his research focuses on functional immune repertoire analysis and single-cell technologies. In the past, Dr. Eyer has held academic positions at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and ESPCI Paris in France and combines different disciplines in his work.
He collaborates locally and internationally on projects related to antibody discovery and immune profiling/characterization, with a focus on their application in neuroinflammation, rare diseases, and personalized medicine. In addition to his research, he is actively involved in teaching, mentoring, and translational activities, including co-founding a biotech start-up, coordinating a doctoral network throughout Europe and contributing to public discussions on science and adaptive immunity following immunization.
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=PRtGoGAAAAAJ&hl=en

Key papers: 
1. Single-cell deep phenotyping of cytokine release unmasks stimulation-specific biological signatures and distinct secretion dynamics
2. Single-cell deep phenotyping of IgG-secreting cells for high-resolution immune monitoring

In our next NSI Rising Star Seminar, we will be hosting Tetsuo Hasegawa (PhD, group leader of Molecular Immunity, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge) with a talk on “3D imaging of the synovium defines an intricate immunological defence system at the blood-joint barrier”. Look forward to seeing you there!

Meeting details:
Speaker: Tetsuo Hasegawa
Title: 3D imaging of the synovium defines an intricate immunological defence system at the blood-joint barrier
Time and date: Thursday, May 15 at 14:00
Meeting link: https://uio.zoom.us/j/64508414976

Talk abstract:
Joint pain or inflammation is a common and early feature of a variety of systemic diseases. These include autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), as well as infection in organs distant to the musculoskeletal system, including enteric or genitourinary infections, which manifest as reactive arthritis. However, why joints are highly responsive to systemic inflammation and where in the joint the inflammation starts are still unknown. We sought to address these questions by developing a whole mount imaging system of the membrane that covers the joint cavity, called synovium, to profile the vascular, neuronal and immune microarchitecture. This revealed that highly permeable capillaries were specifically located at the lining-sublining interface, in the periphery of the synovium, enabling entry of circulating stimuli into the joint. This area of vulnerability was occupied by three subsets of macrophages that demonstrated distinct responses to systemic immune complex challenge and reciprocally interacted with nociceptor neurons, forming a blood-joint barrier (BJB) to defend joint tissue.

More information about Tetsuo Hasegawa:
Dr. Hasegawa is an academic rheumatologist and received his medical degree from Keio University, Japan, in 2011. He went on to complete a Ph.D in the laboratory of Prof. Masaru Ishii at Osaka University, where he identified the pathological osteoclast precursor macrophages and elucidated the mechanism of bone destruction in arthritis. He then began his postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Prof. Menna Clatworthy at University of Cambridge through Human Frontier Science Program long-term fellowship. In 2024, He was awarded the Kennedy Trust Senior Research Fellowship to start his own group in University of Cambridge. His lab is generating a 3D molecular atlas of the membrane in the joint, called synovium, to investigate why joints are responsive to diverse systemic pathologies, how communication between synovial cells and nociceptors influences disease progression, and what mechanisms underlie immune-driven pain in the joints.
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=R0cIJygAAAAJ&hl=en

Key papers: 
1. Macrophages and nociceptor neurons form a sentinel unit around fenestrated capillaries to defend the synovium from circulating immune challenge
2. Identification of a novel arthritis-associated osteoclast precursor macrophage regulated by FoxM1

In our next NSI Rising Star Seminar, we will be hosting Søren E. Degn (PhD, Associate Professor, DFF Research Leader and Lundbeckfonden Ascending Investigator) with a talk on “B cells – the bad boys at the back of the bus”. Look forward to seeing you there!

Meeting details:
Speaker: Søren E. Degn
Title: B cells – the bad boys at the back of the bus
Time and date: Thursday, February 27 at 14:00
Meeting link: https://uio.zoom.us/j/67297197985?pwd=bqgeirifg4EMy2Tph8fTcgzqlnWauU.1
Meeting ID: 672 9719 7985
Passcode: 916148

Talk abstract:
B cells are increasingly recognized not simply as precursors of antibody-producing cells, but as central players across a broad range of autoimmune diseases. In recent work, my group demonstrated that B cells can act as primary antigen-presenting cells priming proto-autoreactive T cells and driving epitope spreading in a murine model of systemic lupus erythematosus (Fahlquist-Hagert et al., Nature Communications 2023). Taking this as a starting point, I will touch upon recently published (Fahlquist-Hagert et al., iScience 2024) and unpublished work characterizing the role of T-follicular regulatory cells in curbing autoreactive germinal center responses, including the use of an intravital abdominal imaging window approach for longitudinal studies of immune processes in the spleen (https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.06.631523). Finally, I will present ongoing work, in which we have identified a previously unappreciated link between age-associated B cells and CD8 T cell activation and exhaustion.

More information about Søren E. Degn:
Søren completed his BSc (2004) and MSc (2007) in Molecular Biology at Aarhus University. During his MSc, he spent a year at the Departments of Biochemistry and Immunology at the University of Toronto, Canada where he worked with Professor David E. Isenman. Søren then joined the laboratory of Professors Jens Chr. Jensenius and Steffen Thiel, where he completed his PhD in Immunology (2010), on the topic of the lectin pathway of complement. His thesis work included the discovery of a novel regulatory component of this pathway, the protein MAp44 (Degn et al., Journal of Immunology 2009). In the course of his PhD studies, Søren also worked for a year in the laboratory of Professor Michael C. Carroll at the Immune Disease Institute, Harvard Medical School, where he contributed to elucidating how influenza viral antigen is transported and presented in the draining lymph node in a vaccination setting (Gonzalez et al., Nature Immunology 2010). Following award of his PhD degree, Søren continued his work on the lectin pathway of complement as a postdoctoral fellow (2011-2013) with Professors Jens Chr. Jensenius and Steffen Thiel. In a series of papers (Degn et al., Journal of Immunology 2012; Degn et al., Journal of Immunology 2013; Degn et al., PNAS 2014), Søren presented a novel theory for the activation mechanism of the lectin pathway of complement. In 2013, he returned to the laboratory of Professor Michael C. Carroll, now at the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine (PCMM) at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. During his Marie Curie Fellowship at the PCMM, Søren elucidated the clonal evolution of autoreactive germinal centers (Degn et al., Cell 2017), and built his expertise within lymphocyte biology using in vivo models and two-photon microscopy, forming the basis of his return to Aarhus University as a Group Leader and Assistant Professor in 2017. In March 2022, he was promoted to tenured Associate Professor at the Department of Biomedicine. Søren continues to work on autoimmune diseases (van der Poel et al., Cell Reports 2019; Juul-Madsen et al., PNAS 2021; Fahlquist-Hagert et al., Nature Communications 2023), but in recent years his attention has also turned to the molecular mechanism behind antigen-driven activation of the B-cell receptor (Ferapontov, Omer et al, Nature Communications 2023; Degn & Tolar, Nat. Rev. Immunol. 2024).
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EyXW-8sAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Key papers: 
1. Antigen presentation by B cells enables epitope spreading across an MHC barrier
2. Antigen footprint governs activation of the B cell receptor