Multi-omics studies on human immune system (SCARDA)

AMED SCARDA (Strategic Centre for Biomedical Advanced Vaccine Research and Development for Preparedness and Response) was established in March 2022 as a framework to lead research and development during peacetime, enabling the rapid advancement of vaccine development as a national policy in the event of infectious disease emergencies. One of its initiatives involves establishing “Japan Initiative for World-leading Vaccine Research and Development Centers”. This aims to realize domestically produced vaccines by developing world-leading R&D hubs (flagship hubs and hubs with anticipated synergistic effects) and supporting institutions. Concurrently, it strengthens and advances outcome-oriented related research centered on these hubs during peacetime. As a supporting institution for “Human Immunology” within this framework, we received a grant and are advancing the following research alongside with several teams from IMS.

we are now advancing multi-omics analyses of immune cell subsets in healthy individuals (13 at rest, 7 upon stimulation) to elucidate the mechanisms of the human immune system and to understand and control disease as well as vaccine development. With this background in mind, several teams at IMS are working on multi-omics analyses focusing on genetic diversity (PI: Okada Y), gene expression(PI: Yamamoto), epigenome(PI: Murakawa), proteome(PI: Imami), lipidome(PI: Arita) for each subset of human immune cells as well as intestinal flora, and metabolome(PI: Ohno). The isolation and analysis of antigen-specific lymphocytes is also being carried out in parallel (PI: Fujii). These data are being analyzed with statistical genetics (PI: Okada Y) as well as AI (PI: Seita) and will be made public (PI: Kasukawa).