Grégoire Altan-Bonnet, Ph.D.

We are interested in developing actionable models of the immune response to design and optimize new immunotherapies. Our premise is that the immune system is a self-organized collection of cells, whose individual activation must be harnessed, tuned, and coaxed at the population level. We rely on new quantitative methods (e.g., high-dimensional single cell analysis by spectral cytometry, robotics) and computational modeling to identify key limiting steps controlling the balance between response and tolerance in the immune system.

Our computational models are strongly interfaced with our experimental efforts. We model immunological events explicitly, starting from biochemical events (e.g., ligand/receptor interactions) to cellular (signal transduction and gene regulation) to population dynamics. Such integration of multiple spatial- and time-scales is leading to a better understanding of the dynamics of immune responses, and is opening new opportunities for external manipulation and immunotherapies. Our projects go from conceptual and fundamental aspects of the immune system, to very practical applications in the pre-clinical context (profiling of tumors, manipulation of immune responses against tumors).