Klinische vooruitzichten van immuuncel-subtypes bij neuro-inflammatoire aandoeningen via single-cell transcriptomics

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a common neuroinflammatory disorder. MS typically affects young adults and can lead to important physical and cognitive disability at a crucial stage in their life. There are approximately 13,500 individuals suffering from the disease in Belgium, and 2.5 million worldwide. Characteristics of the disease are inflammation, demyelination and axonal loss in brain and spinal cord. In collaboration with colleagues worldwide of the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium we have identified more than 200 genetic risk factors for MS in the last years. Our research group has also been pioneering in moving beyond susceptibility to understand the important heterogeneity, that is patient-to-patient variation in disease course and response to treatment. Despite these successes, both for both susceptibility and heterogeneity only a fraction of the entire heritability has now been identified. The current PhD project focuses on the remaining interindividual variation in susceptibility and heterogeneity in MS and postulates new hypotheses on novel sources of genetic variation as the explanation. With a background as MD and Neurology resident, the PhD candidate will be excellently placed to combine clinical data of MS patients with biological data obtained from samples of the same patients. For the generation of biological data, state-of-the-art genetic methods such as next-generation sequencing and single-cell sequencing are applied, followed by data integration, bio-informatics and statistical analysis.