2021 ANNUAL REPORT | Bar-Ilan Institute of Nanotechnology & Advanced Materials

Studying our adaptive immune system can shed light on biology’s remarkable potential for revolutionizing medicine. It can also reveal the challenges that still need to be met and how bioconvergence research can help us deliver medical innovations. Our immune system consists of two subsystems, the innate immune system, which is generic, and the adaptive immune system, which develops throughout our lives in response to any pathogen—virus, bacteria or mutation—it encounters. “For each pathogen, this system produces specific antibodies, T-cell receptors and B-cell receptors. It also remembers how it has dealt with every threat. So, for example, when we’re exposed to a new coronavirus, we will already be better equipped to deal with it. The entire collection of one’s adaptive immune system’s receptors constitutes one’s immune repertoire at a specific point in time. It is made up of hundreds of billions of white blood cells, each with a slightly different receptor,” says Prof. Gur Yaari, who is a member of the Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire (AIRR) Community. Advancing Personalized Medicine “In a sense, the adaptive immune repertoire is the most sensitive biosensor there is, because the adaptive immune system can detect cancer long before any mammography, MRI or PET-CT technique can. B-cell receptors and T-cell receptors specific to this cancer would indicate its existence.” High-throughput technologies, such as DNA sequencing and powerful microscopy, provide scientists with more data about the human body than ever before. But deriving meaningful information from these data, the kind of detailed and diverse information we need to have such a perfect tool for personalized diagnosis and prognosis, is still highly challenging. “Developing novel tools and advanced machinelearning methods for data processing and analysis that can provide scientists the knowledge they need to advance their research is one focus of my work. The other is to implement these tools in data-driven experimental research, analyzing databases in a search for patterns and insights that can expand our knowledge of how biological systems are built and function, with emphasis on the adaptive immune system.” Bioconvergence Accelerating Medical and Life-altering Innovation 41

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDU2MA==