Our previous Charcot Research Fund grant of 2022 enabled us to apply an innovative technique called ‘single-cell transcriptomics’ to start to unravel the role of a long-ignored cell type of the innate immune system – the Natural Killer (NK) cell – in the disease mechanisms leading to MS.  For this we investigated the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of MS patients. In the current project, we wish to build on our findings by applying an even newer approach called ‘spatial transcriptomics and proteomics’ to look at these cells also in the MS brain. By identifying and characterizing critical cell players that are present both in blood & cerebrospinal fluid as well as in the brain of MS patients, we hope to identify new leads for the development of more targeted, efficient and safe therapies.

In collaboration with Rega Institute, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Transplantation, KULeuven