Two times a year, our department of Diagnostic Sciences organizes a science afternoon. Lena closed the afternoon showcasing her amazing work for the spatial thymus atlas. Read the preprint here

In the context of the Human Cell Atlas Thymus Seed Network ​​​we collaborated with the labs of Sarah Teichmann (Wellcome Sanger Institute) and Ron Germain (NIAID, NIH) to generate a spatial atlas of human thymus development. We established a novel common coordinate framework to allow the robust and quantiative mapping of thymic cells across donors, ages and even technologies. By combining this with a comprehensive single cell reference data set, spatial transcriptomics and multiplex protein imaging, we were able to show that the canonical T cell maturation trajectory is established remarkably early in fetal development, whereas the niches of thymic epithelial cell progenitors differ between pre- and postnatal thymus. Moreover, through integration of an extensive CITE-seq data set with spatial information, we found that CD8 and CD4 lineage thymocytes show distinct chemokine receptor profiles and migration kinetics throughout their maturation. Read all about it on our preprint on bioRxiv​ or check the corresponding twitter thread for a digested summary. Many thanks to all the co-authors!

For the second time the Single Cell Network Ghent (SING) organised a superb event to bring together single cell enthusiasts across faculties and institutes. We got to hear the recent advances in wet and dry lab approaches for the multimodal and spatial profiling of single cells from experts in the field including Britta Velten, Marek Bartosovic, Chris Marine and Yuriy Baglaenko. In addition, PhD students and postdocs from a multitude of labs were able to showcase their work in short talks and posters - Lena presented a snippet of our collaboration with the Teichmann and Germain labs, in which we attempt to profile 'developing T cells in space and time'. An inspiring day with great networking opportunities!​