The mission of the HDI program is to provide highly detailed analysis of biological samples to advance our understanding of the immune system through comprehensive profiling to inform mechanistic studies and facilitate the development of effective immune-based therapies.
- To develop new immune-based diagnostics and tools to inform clinical decisions
- Rigorous application of multi-parameter technologies to guide discovery and development of new therapeutics for cancer, infectious diseases, and degenerative diseases
The VIC HDI team has developed computational strategies and algorithms for analyzing high-dimensional data to identify specific immune system responses associated with clinical measures and outcomes. The program utilizes multiple high-parameter technologies, applying them singly or in combination as appropriate for a specific project to maximize the amount of information obtained from small clinical samples of blood or tissue, such as
- High-parameter profiling of immune cells using mass and spectral cytometry
- Multi-modal imaging of cells, biomolecules, and drugs in pathology samples
Outputs from these assays, together with classical immunoassays and clinical data can be interrogated using a robust repertoire of computational and statistical tools to gain novel insights and identify actionable hallmarks. The HDI program is open to collaboration with academic and industry researchers from outside of VIC and MGH. Current active projects address a variety of clinical areas, including infectious disease vaccines, the immune microenvironment in solid tumors, immune system changes following organ transplantation or traumatic injury, and immune dysfunction in degenerative diseases.
