Deep Immune Receptor Modeling (DIRM)
The DIRM project seeks to increase our understanding of the immune system through development of tailored, cutting-edge deep machine learning methods and rational data generation for characterizing immune receptor interactions.
Immune receptors are a critical component of the immune system’s shield against pathogen infections. They are immensely diverse, with an estimate of 10^9 distinct molecules found in a given individual. Upon infection, a small proportion of these potentially expand and, if achieved timely, result in disease clearance.
Designing immune interventions to control and manipulate this expansion thus has large clinical benefits, as illustrated for instance with SarsCov2 vaccines. The fundamental understanding of how to rationally perform such manipulations and predict immune receptor specificity remain however the greatest challenge in immunology and immunotherapy.
This project will work towards resolving this, resulting in empowered tools for development of immunotherapies and treatments.