At HudsonAlpha, we are applying our expertise in human genome and DNA sequencing technologies to understand the immune system. This emerging science is called immunogenomics. Several of our research scientists are pioneers in the field.
The immune system is at the forefront of how humans and animals interact with their environments. The immune system is organized and regulated by a subset of genes from the human genome. Consequently, we can apply DNA sequencing technologies to ‘see,’ at a molecular level, the health of the immune system. The quest of the immunogenomics field is to interpret what the immune system tells us about our health and what it is working on today or has worked on in the past.
HudsonAlpha faculty have developed technology that ‘paints a portrait’ of the immune system’s genome from patient samples. This technology helps us visualize the immune repertoire, which is the diversity and health of the immune system’s many different genomic components.
Immune repertoire portraits can help identify disease-related DNA sequences. These sequences could be biomarkers that point to different diseases. They have the potential to help physicians diagnose disease earlier, treat it more effectively, and improve prognoses.
Immune repertoires have been quickly adopted as excellent research tools around the world. To keep HudsonAlpha as a leader in immunogenomics, we are dedicating resources to faculty members engaged in the field and to a project entitled Repertoire 10,000, or R10K.
The R10K project aims to sequence the immune repertoire of 100 patients for each of 100 diseases, which makes a total of 10,000 samples. The data from this project will provide a three-dimensional model from which we can create a two-dimensional portrait. Each portrait represents the immune diversity of a specific disease. Together, the portraits make up a portrait gallery of 100 diseases. By comparing a person’s individual portrait with the portraits in the gallery, we can diagnose diseases earlier as well as develop targeted therapies.
To purchase an immune repertoire portrait and help fund further R10K research, visit http://www.im2print.com.
