Technological Innovations in Immunology

Immunology research is changing and evolving as new tools and methodologies supplement and expedite traditional procedures. Researchers are increasingly turning to multiomic single cell and spatial characterization technology to delve deeper into the complex molecular and cellular networks and immune system responses, and translate discoveries into actionable insights for the treatment of infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, and cancer.

There are 202 peer-reviewed articles in immunology and immuno-oncology that use 10x genomics products. This number is rising year after year. Immunity is our most popular scientific publication, with cell a close second. We are honoured to see an increasing number of clients publishing research in such high impact journals, and we are enthusiastic to see how multiomic single cell technology will speed crucial immunology and human health breakthroughs.

Researchers are using single cell and spatial technology to advance our knowledge of the heterogeneity and developmental progression of immune cells in a wide range of tissues and biological systems, whether they are investigating macrophage infiltration in tiny murine synovial joints or deconstructing the immune landscape of human kidney tissue distressed by lupus nephritis.They are revealing the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the adaptive and innate immune response, enabling various and novel applications, thanks to their capacity to completely characterise immune cells. 

Single cell and spatial solutions for immunology research:

 Information about the immune system are researchers gaining from 10x genomics solutions, with the combined power of single cell and spatial technology, researchers can:

• Examine the cellular context of the adaptive immune response and immune repertoires of hundreds to tens of thousands of T and B cells.
• Uncover cell-to-cell gene expression variability and identify rare cell types from complex biological samples.
• Discover cellular heterogeneity stemming from epigenetic variability and understand the regulation of genes to better define cell state and types for lineage tracing and biomarker discovery.
• Capture spatial gene expression in heterogeneous tissue samples, observing tissue morphology and immune infiltration.

Researchers continue to develop innovative applications of these tools and drive discovery in critical areas of immunology research, including:

• Vaccines and antibody discovery: See how researchers have developed an unbiased, high-throughput method to screen the antibody repertoire of single B cells for accelerated antibody discovery.
• Infectious Disease: Learn how scientists discovered epithelial–immune cellular crosstalk that may localize macrophages and neutrophils to regions susceptible to infection.
• Cellular and molecular mechanisms of immunology: Find out how scientists identified two successive stages of innate lymphoid cell development and the molecular events that drive cell fate commitment.
• Immuno-oncology: Explore how cancer researchers discovered that expanded CD8+ T cell clones may have been recruited from outside the tumor microenvironment following immune checkpoint blockade therapy.