ORGANIZER:

Ramit Mehr, Bar Ilan University

 

Lymphocytes are white blood cells that take part in the immune response. The three major types of lymphocytes are T, B and NK cells. Each of these populations exhibits a large diversity of phenotypes and functions, and is thus referred to as a "repertoire". Studying the generation, development, selection and function of lymphocyte repertoires is essential for understanding immune responses in healthy individuals and in immune deficient, autoimmune disease or cancer patients. The recent development of high-throughput methods for data collection enables us now, for the first time, to analyze and compare large samples of lymphocyte repertoires in health, ageing and disease. The increasing amount of data however, challenges the immunological community to develop new tools and methods for organizing the data and extracting meaningful information. Furthermore, the need to test hypotheses regarding immune function, and generate predictions regarding the outcomes of medical treatments and vaccines, necessitates the development of complex mathematical and computational models. These models cover processes on multiple scales, from the genetic and molecular to the cellular and system scales.

The conference will include talks on: the dynamics of lymphocyte migration between different tissues, the dynamics of lympocyte repertoire activation during viral or bacterial infections (such as infection with the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV), and various methods for the analysis of lymphocyte repertoire diversity.