Joanna Groom

Jacques Miller?

“It started by taking a thymus out of a mouse,” said Jo Handelsman, the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Who would have thought that would be an exciting idea for the future of medicine?”

Thanks @10xgenomics.bsky.social for the shout out and for making your data publicly available

Why waste precious resources ($$) to reinvent data that already exists? Cool human datasets ready to go

(Although now we have scratched the spatial itch, we may need to do more @chinweetan.bsky.social 🤔)

Today is the last day to make a submission! You don't have to fill in the survey l, you can just upload a letter or even a video

🫵🏻Advocate for fundamental research👊🏻

@nhmrc.bsky.social need your feedback to develop the best strategy for the future of Australian medical research

Link in the 🧵

Dear Everyone, I've read the #NHMRC draft strategy and I have notes ...

So I'm going to...🧵🤔🧵😱🧵😵‍💫🧵🙏🧵🧵🧵
This is a repost from X because you all need to know!

#NHMRCdraftStratergy #Ihavenotes #ValueFundamentalScience

@nhmrc.bsky.social

Thrilled to make the cover of @natimmunol.nature.com this month.

A version of this warhol-inspired image has been in my head almost since we first conceived this Tfh diversity project (many, many years ago) @wehi-research.bsky.social

TFH cell programs by pathogen and species - Nature Immunology CD4+ T follicular helper (TFH) cells that develop in response to a range of pathogens share aspects of a common gene signature. However, cytokine environments, rather than pathogen class, shape diversity in programming potential.

"Biology is messy and sometimes we need to embrace the mess"
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Huge thanks to Amy Weinmann and Danielle Chisolm for beautifully highlighting our work and the importance of our approaches @natimmunol.nature.com

Yellow Tfh cells activate magenta B cells to produce protective antibodies during parasite infection.

WEHI scientists led by @groomlab.bsky.social‬ @chinweetan.bsky.social map how Tfh cells tailor instructions based on infection type. A step toward smarter vaccines and therapies.

📄 In @natimmunol.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🔗 Read more: www.wehi.edu.au/news/unlocki...

This entire project is intertwined with the influence of cytokines to specify Tfh phenotype differentiation and to modify their function.
Ill be presenting this (and some unpublished work) at the @cytokinesociety.bsky.social meeting 2025 in Seattle in November.

International PhD Scholar Initiative Our International PhD Scholar Initiative enables outstanding international students to join WEHI's Medical Biology PhD Program.

Generating this Resource has initiated multiple new projects in the lab.
If you are interested in joining us, please reach out.
@wehi-research.bsky.social International PhD Scholarships are now open.

This was a massive collaborative effort based on our local ASI network including @kimljacobson.bsky.social @niclag.bsky.social @coopernatant.bsky.social @katherinekedz.bsky.social @jenjuno.viralvaxlab.com @cvandesandt.bsky.social @amania001.bsky.social (these are all i can find 🦋). Huge thanks 🙌

Combined this Resource provides new ways to:
🌟Assess the impact of route, affinity, dose on Tfh function
🌟Investigate Tfh phenotype plasticity
🌟Direct B cell responses for vaccines against a diverse range of pathogens
🌟Unlock avenues to understand and treat antibody-mediated diseases

Further, we identified new cell surface markers to explore these phenotypes across lymphoid tissues and blood with @katherinekedz.bsky.social and with @jenjuno.viralvaxlab.com in an antigen-specific manner, using longitudinal infected or vaccine cohorts.

Next, with Vanessa Bryant (no 🦋), we performed CITE-seq on human tonsil Tfh scRNAseq. This showed that our mouse signatures overlayed with distinct human Tfh clusters.

We found these cytokines act as levers of Tfh phenotypes, beyond Th1-Tfh bifurcation. Highlighting separate transcriptional modules to instruct Tfh cell identity and functional branching. The latter being instructed by cytokines and overlayed by lineage-defining factors to instruct B cell responses.

We next established Tfh-pathogen specific signatures which indicated distinct transcriptional programs, functional potential and highlighted unique cytokine signaling profiles.

This suggested cytokine pathways are a stronger driver of specific heterogeneous Tfh cell phenotypes than pathogen class.

We then performed bulk RNAseq to profile IL21+, and IL21- Tfh cells, T follicular regulatory cells, and T effector cells from each infection.

This allowed us to establish a core Tfh signature that is conserved regardless of pathogen type.

First, we established that each infection established distinct Tfh populations and, with @kimljacobson.bsky.social, tailor distinct B cell responses.

Here, we expand this to investigate how distinct programing is established during diverse challenges, comparing viral, helminth, and bacterial infections.

We hypothesized that pathogen-specific cues result in functionally distinct Tfh phenotypes with the capacity to tailor B cell responses.

Context-Dependent Role for T-bet in T Follicular Helper Differentiation and Germinal Center Function following Viral Infection Shiekh et al. show that, in influenza and LCMV infections, the role of the transcription factor T-bet in TFH differentiation is contingent on environmental cues, IL-2 signaling, and T cell competition...

Previously we established that context-dependent transcriptional programing exists for Tfh induced during viral infections @amania001.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

CD4+ T follicular helper (Tfh) cells display remarkable functional flexibility, directing B cell responses during vaccination and all pathogen classes and being implicated during inflammatory and antibody-mediated diseases.

Check out the Tfh “circle of influence” from @profshanecrotty.bsky.social

Divergent cytokine and transcriptional signatures control functional T follicular helper cell heterogeneity - Nature Immunology Dalit, Tan and colleagues provide a multiomic profile of T follicular helper (TFH) cells responses to diverse pathogens, revealing a blueprint for transcriptional flexibility and new tools to interrog...

Thrilled to have our latest research @wehi-research.bsky.social published in @natimmunol.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This work was an outstanding partnership between talented PhD student Len Dalit (now postdoc, no 🦋) and bioinformatician @chinweetan.bsky.social

Thread below...

Abstract deadline extended to Monday, June 30! And travel grants are still available to student and post-doc members. Don't miss out - REPOST to share the info with others.

Make your future Melbourne Lead the next wave of biomedical discovery

🌏 Make your mark in Melbourne! 🌏 We are looking for innovative researchers to join WEHI as Laboratory Heads and help lead the next wave of biomedical discovery.

For more information and to apply 👇

🧠🍔 Just 48 hours on a high-fat diet can weaken gut immunity. Our new study shows saturated fats rapidly impair ILC3s!
Proud to see this featured by
@wehi-research.bsky.social as I continue to explore these questions @monashuniversity.bsky.social with the IMI Lab!

ICYMI: explore our #Immunology collection, highlighting B cells, CD8+ T cell stemness, priming and differentiation, CD4+ T cell heterogeneity, autoimmunity, lymphatic immunophysiology and innate immune signaling. 👉 rupress.org/jem/collecti...
#AAI2025

Congratulations Doug and team

So excited to share our first neuro focused paper from the lab, we show that CXCL4 (PF4) is transported into the brain by proteoglycans within the endothelial glycocalyx and that GAG binding also mediates the pro neurogenesis effects of CXCL4. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to have our latest research published in @jem.org this week and also highlighted by @natrevimmunol.nature.com
@wehi-research.bsky.social @benjbroom.bsky.social

Thanks to @cytokinesociety.bsky.social Signals+ for highlighting our recent work @benjbroom.bsky.social @wehi-research.bsky.social

Lovely work Isaak. Good to see you here.