Venular Endothelial Cells as Gatekeepers for Leukocyte Homing to the Thymus

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Kristin Rattay
• Subject Area: Immunology
• Term: from 2017 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 393681393

Lymphocyte progenitor migration into the thymus is a prerequisite for central tolerance and thereby key to a functioning immune system. In order to understand the details of thymic homing it is important to reveal the cellular and molecular key players of the endothelial lining mediated cell recruitment from the vessels towards the stroma. A newly developed monoclonal antibody against the venular endothelial cell specific protein DARC for the first time enables a distinction and isolation of endothelial cell subsets and their functional characterization. The proposed project aims at identifying the role of venular endothelial cells in thymic homing, as opposed to non-venular endothelial cells of the capillaries and arterioles, by using whole mount 2-photon microscopy to address the segmental specialization of the microvasculature and RNA-seq and single cell RNA-seq to identify the regulators of the endothelial cell subset specialization. The proposed project will help to improve our understanding of lymphocyte progenitor recruitment to the thymus and reveal which role the different subsets of endothelial cells play in this process.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. Ulrich von Andrian