Single Cell Sequencing Instruments – Add-on grant for LEO Foundation Skin Immunology Research Center
Grantee: University of Copenhagen
Amount: DKK 15,296,667
Grant category: Standalone grants
Year: 2019
Geography: Denmark
Researchers in immunology, cell biology and cancer were first movers in single-cell sequencing when they demonstrated a huge potential of this novel technology to unravel novel cell populations and disease heterogeneity.
This approach has gained further momentum fueled by new, exiting studies in neurobiology and rheumatology. So far, single-cell sequencing has not been used in relation to skin diseases – with few exceptions such as our new study on single-cell sequencing in cutaneous T cell lymphoma (CTCL) – the first paper of its kind – which was rapidly followed by three additional papers on single-cell sequencing in CTCL.
Moving from investigating an average of molecular changes in thousands or millions of cells to the study of changes in the transcriptome in single cells is critical to obtain a deeper and more precise understanding of disease heterogeneity and novel disease mechanisms. In other words, single-cell sequencing is expected to become the novel golden standard in all areas of research related to immunology and inflammation including the scientific focus area of the LEO Foundation Skin Immunology Research Center.
The “package” provides the sufficient capacity to conduct state-of-the-art single-cell analysis in the key areas of the LEO Foundation Skin Immunology Research Center. In order to get maximal advantage, value, and rapid implementation of the instruments, we will employ a novel protocol for this platform to run up to 5 different modalities (mRNA, TCRab, TCRgd, surface proteins, sample hashing and CRISPR lead sequences) in parallel to top-tune the technology.