Abstract

This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Thursday 17 July 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)

Speaker: Dr John James, Associate Professor, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick

Title: Elucidating T Cell Signalling Dynamics Using Reconstitution and Optogenetics

Abstract: T cells are an essential part of our immune system; they detect infected cells and either directly kill or orchestrate their removal to keep us healthy despite constant exposure to potential pathogens. Great progress has been made in identifying the parts of the signalling networks that T cells use to execute these decision-making processes, and we now have near-complete lists of these pathways. However, to fully describe T cell function we must also understand how signals traverse these network connections, but this knowledge remains far more limited in T cells.

To address this limitation, we use cellular reconstitution and light-mediated control over these signalling pathways to directly and quantitively investigate T cell signalling in the cellular context. In the talk, I will show how we have used these discovery-based tools to better understand the mechanisms of action for new therapeutics (bispecifics/CAR-T), as well as preliminary data on quantifying inhibitory receptor function. I will also present our reconstitution work on how the pre-T cell receptor can drive commitment to the αβ-T cell lineage in the absence of ligand.

Host: Maike De La Roche, CRUK Cambridge

Refreshments will be available following the seminar.