Everyone’s immune system has a story to tell—but a picture can say a thousand words in a glance. The immune system’s ability to keep a living record record of the challenges it faces and the permutations it must make in response serves as a kind of “snapshot” of a person’s immune functions.
If we could access these stories we could have insight into the nature of the body’s immune response to disease and infection, we could learn things that could help us diagnose diseases earlier, develop new and better therapy options, and identify opportunities for new vaccines.
Armed with this knowledge, and using immune repertoire sequencing technology, the Huntsville-based company iRepertoire is gaining access to the body’s immunological memory, or “logbook,” and creating a three-dimensional model, of all past infections and diseases with which the immune system has come into contact. The 3D model is then turned into a 2D visual portrait called a “picture of health.”
The R10K initiative is creating a gallery of images—an immune repertoire—showcasing 100 different diseases. Individual portraits can then be compared with the portraits in the gallery to possibly predict, based on the immune system history, what diseases a person may have now and in the future.
The intellectual property coming out of R10K will be a shared public resource with scientists around the world, and also at the Immunogenomics Conference this fall, with applications in genomics, bioinformatics, immunology, clinical and translational medicine.
iRepertoire is a platinum sponsor ImmunoGenomics 2014. Register for the conference now at immunogenomics.com.
To purchase an immune repertoire portrait and help fund further R10K research, visit im2print.com.
