ENLIGHT-TEN

June 2019

ENLIGHT-TEN at youth event

ENLIGHT-TEN was at the IdeenExpo, Europe’s biggest youth event for science & technology. News

June 2019

Publication in Nature Communications

ESR Marisa Stebegg shows that faecal transplants can rejuvenate the immunesystem in the gut. News

May 2019

Congratulations

Congratulations to Marisa Stebegg who successfully defended her PhD. News

March 2019

Congratulations

Congratulations to Martina Lubrano di Ricco who successfully defended her PhD. News

April 2019

Day of Immunology

ENLIGHT-TEN celebrated the Day of Immunology by various activities for a lay audience. Read more here

March 2019

Congratulations

Congratulations to Martina Lubrano di Ricco who successfully defended her PhD. News

February 2019

Scientists map key genes regulating immune cells - ENLIGHT-TEN featured in CORDIS

CORDIS journalists covered the ENLIGHT-TEN project explaining some of its results to the general public. News

January 2019

CRISPR-based screen reveals gene networks central to modulating #Th2 cell function

Our ESR Tomas Gomes and PI Sarah Teichmann together with colleagues published the results of genome-wide CRISPR Screens in T Helper Cells in Cell News

November 2018

Seats available for the ENLIGHT-TEN winter school 2019

ENLIGHT-TEN invites external students to register for the winter school "How to Succeed in Finding and Getting a Job for Biomedical Researchers" News

October 2018

Joint review on Germinal Center Response by our ESRs and PIs

3 ESRs and 2 PIs of ENLIGHT-TEN joined forces and published an interesting review on the regulation of the Germinal Center Response. News

October 2018

Nobel Prize for Immunologists

The nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2018 was awarded to immunologists James Allison and Tasuku Honjo. News

September 2018

ECI 2018 poster price for
ENLIGHT-TEN student

Congratulations to our PhD student Marisa Stebegg who won a poster prize at the ECI 2018 a major immunology conference. News

September 2018

Successful symposium organised by our students

The ENLIGHT-TEN PhD students organised a successful satellite symposium at the ECI 2018. News

August 2018

450 visitors at ENLIGHT-TEN
art exhibition

The art exhibition "Art Enlightening Immunology" from 30 August until 5 September in Amsterdam not only attracted more than 450 visitors but also stimulated interesting discussions. News

August 2018

Micro-grants for the 2019 MCAA General Assembly

Call for applications for a micro-grant to attend the next MCAA General Assembly in Vienna 25 & 26 February 2019 now open. See

July 2018

Arts Enlightening Immunology

ENLIGHT-TEN proudly announces the exhibition "Arts Enlightening Immunology" which will open on 30 August in Amsterdam. Three internationally renowned artists visited the ENLIGHT-TEN labs for immunology inspired artworks. Join us for an exciting event!

June 2018

ENLIGHT-TEN PI featured women leader in UK healthcare

ENLIGHT-TEN PI Sarah Teichmann is featured as one of 30 women leaders in UK healthcare. see

May 2018

Visitors' day

ENLIGHT-TEN at HZI visitors' day News

April 2018

Summer school on Translational Medicine big success

Our summer school at BAYER was a big success with all participants saying they will recommend the course News/Events/Results

March 2018

ENLIGHT-TENed by big data: advancing T cell Immunology

Register now for the ECI satellite symposium organised by the PhD students of ENLIGHT-TEN News/Events/Results

March 2018

Bridging the academia and industry gap in drug development

The webinar offered by MCAA on 23 March at 13:00 CET will introduce you to key aspects in the collaboration of industry and academia. Info and registration

February 2018

Open ENLIGHT-TEN PhD position at iMM in Lisbon

We are looking for a candidate with a strong immunology background for a project with Marc Veldhoen News/Events/Results

September 2017

Funding for networking activities

Funding for EFIS-Immunology Letters (IL) study group T_CELL_CONNECT_EUROPE received News/Events/Results

September 2017

Supervisor of the year

ENLIGHT-TEN coordinator Jochen Hühn has been awarded "Supervisor of the Year" News/Events/Results

August 2017

Science Immunology paper

by ENLIGHT-TEN PIs Graca, Sousa, Linterman and colleagues. See News/Events/Results

July 2017

Attractive ESR position available

Attractive ESR position as ENLIGHT-TEN PhD student available. Please go to menu item News/Events/Results

June 2017

FameLab talk of our ESR Luis Almeida

Watch the FameLab talk of our ESR Luis Almeida on the immune system and autoimmune diseases.

March 2017

ESR position at MUW filled

The position for ESR4 at the Medical University Vienna has been filled. We are pleased to welcome Narendra Dhele to our consortium.

February 2017

Attractive ESR position available

Attractive ESR position as ENLIGHT-TEN PhD student available. Please go to menu item News/Events/Results

December 2016

YouTube Video

youtube video no. 1

Follicular Helper T cells have a very particular role in the immune response. Saumya Kumar explains how. Please go to menu item General Public

December 2016

ENLIGHT-TEN newsletter no. 2

newsletter no. 2

The ENLIGHT-TEN newsletter no.2 is online. Please go to menu item General Public.

June 2016

ENLIGHT-TEN newsletter no. 1

newsletter no. 1

The ENLIGHT-TEN newsletter no.1 is online. Please go to menu item General Public.

June 2016

ENLIGHT-TEN flyer no. 1

flyer no. 1

Find out what ENLIGHT-TEN has in common with football and view our new flyer here.

Our mission

The mission of ENLIGHT-TEN is to provide cross-disciplinary training in T cell immunology and big data analysis in order to train a new generation of researchers to exploit the power of emerging technological platforms.

Understanding and manipulating T cell responses is critical to therapeutic intervention in a wide-range of immune-mediated pathologies. The use of immunotherapy to increase anti-tumor responses has recently gained considerable attention, and suppressing the immune response to ameliorate autoimmunity is an equally important goal.

The growing complexity of T cell differentiation

To manipulate T cell responses in a way that brings maximum therapeutic benefit, it is necessary to generate a detailed understanding of precisely how T cells activate and differentiate following antigen encounter. Recent years have revolutionised our view on CD4+ helper T cell differentiation, with a recognition that it is far more complex and plastic than we previously appreciated1. In addition, we now realise that diverse extrinsic cues (e.g. nutrient availability, oxygen concentrations, salt balance, the microbiome) play an even bigger role than we anticipated in guiding T cell differentiation2. Thus, there are many more T cell fates that we previously realised, and many more factors that influence fate choice.

Emerging technologies in -omics/bioinformatics

At the same time, the technologies available to study cell identity have changed dramatically3,4. The new era of sequencing technologies has facilitated data gathering on an unprecedented scale and this has been accompanied by the emergence of novel gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 developed by a member of our consortium. Thus, the tools available to apply to the understanding of biological processes have advanced significantly, and the field is embarking on a new era of high dimensional data collection and tailored gene manipulation.

The details of the specific research projects that are being offered can be found here.

The Power of Dual Training

One of the challenges created by rapid advance of sequencing technologies is the gulf between the labs that have expertise in T cell functional biology and those that are equipped to handle "big data". The aim of ENLIGHT-TEN is to train a cohort of early stage researchers (ESRs) to be comfortable in both areas: to have an in-depth understanding of functional T cell immunology alongside the capacity to generate and process large data sets. Thereto, ENLIGHT-TEN has developed a cross-disciplinary, high-quality educational programme to provide all its PhD students with specialist high-level research training, a broad scientific skill set and experience in both academic and industrial working environments. The members of our network have expertise in RNA-seq, Bi-seq, ChIP-seq, promoter capture HiC, metabolomics, genome-editing using CRISPR-Cas9 technology and bioinformatics in addition to critical mass in T cell functional assays and disease models. We are ideally placed to provide a broad cross-disciplinary training that will empower trainees to rapidly take advantage of evolving technologies and apply them to biological problems. By the end of the project, all PhD students will possess combined expertise in T cell immunology as well as acquisition and interpretation of large data sets, positioning them to take immediate advantage of new big data-generating technologies as they emerge5,6. In addition to excellent research skills, future scientific leaders and innovators require additional personal development with respect to team-leading abilities, project management and entrepreneurship. This broad spectrum of skills is difficult to teach in an exclusively academic environment. Thus, our training programme will offer these additional skills to supplement and complement the university-based PhD education. With careful attention being paid to their personal development and with the support of a network of industrial and academic mentors, ENLIGHT-TEN's PhD students will be extremely well placed to successfully compete for academic or industrial life science-related positions, and to drive research and innovation within the European Research Area.

In particular, the fellows will:

Training activities will be organized within a framework of eight training modules:

  1. University-based education, local training
  2. Research project-based training
  3. Personal career development plan
  4. Annual network meetings
  5. Annual Summer Schools
  6. International Symposium
  7. Web-based training
  8. Secondments

The details of the training modules can be found here.

Consortium members

ENLIGHT-TEN consists of ten beneficiaries and six partners from eight nations within the EU, bringing a balanced portfolio of expertise bridging in-depth knowledge of T cell differentiation and pathophysiology of autoimmune and allergic diseases, through to bioinformatic analysis of large data sets. Given the importance of bioinformatic analysis within this programme, the involvement of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) is a major strength of our network. EBI is part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), an inter-governmental organisation, and is world-leading in the generation, analysis and storage of large-scale bioinformatic data.

The details of the consortium members can be found here.

References

1 O'Shea, J.J. & Paul, W.E. Mechanisms underlying lineage commitment and plasticity of helper CD4+ T cells. Science 327, 1098-1102 (2010).
2 Bonelli, M., et al. Helper T cell plasticity: impact of extrinsic and intrinsic signals on transcriptomes and epigenomes. Current topics in microbiology and immunology 381, 279-326 (2014).
3 Chattopadhyay, P.K., Gierahn, T.M., Roederer, M. & Love, J.C. Single-cell technologies for monitoring immune systems. Nat Immunol 15, 128-135 (2014).
4 Kidd, B.A., Peters, L.A., Schadt, E.E. & Dudley, J.T. Unifying immunology with informatics and multiscale biology. Nat Immunol 15, 118-127 (2014).
5 Spreafico, R., Mitchell, S. & Hoffmann, A. Training the 21st Century Immunologist. Trends Immunol 36, 283–285 (2015).
6 Schultze, J.L. Teaching 'big data' analysis to young immunologists. Nat Immunol 16, 902–905 (2015).