The public defence will be held as a video conference over Zoom.
The defence will follow regular procedure as far as possible, hence it will be open to the public and the audience can ask ex auditorio questions when invited to do so.
Click here to participate in the public defence
Due to copyright reasons, an electronic copy of the thesis must be ordered from the faculty. In order for the faculty to have time to process the order, it must be received by the faculty no later than 2 days prior to the public defence. Orders received later than 2 days before the defence will not be processed. Inquiries regarding the thesis after the public defence must be addressed to the candidate.
Digital Trial Lecture – time and place
Adjudication committee
- First opponent: Professor Vivianne Malmström, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
- Second opponent: Docent Païvi Saavalainen,University of Helsinki, Finland
- Third member and chair of the evaluation committee: Professor Trygve Holmøy, University of Oslo
Chair of the Defence
Professor II Guttorm Haraldsen, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo
Principal Supervisor
Associate Professor Shuo-Wang Qiao, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo
Summary
Celiac disease is a chronic inflammatory disorder resulting from mis-appropriate immune response toward ingested gluten proteins. Gluten-specific CD4+ T cells, as the key drivers for the pathogenesis can be identified by staining with HLA-DQ:gluten tetramers.
In this project, we conducted single cell transcriptome sequencing on CD4+ T cells sampled from peripheral blood of untreated CD patients. The tetramer-specific T cells showed transcriptomic profiles consistent with activated effector memory T cells that share features with Th1 and follicular helper T cells. Compared to non-specific cells, gluten-specific T cells showed differential expression of several genes involved in metabolic processes, including fatty acid metabolism and redox potentials. In addition, we utilized the unique expression of immune receptor of each T and B cell to quantify the impact of index switching on single cell RNA-seq experiments.
We also demonstrated that the state of celiac disease could be inferred by unbiased direct TCR sequencing on lamina propria T cells, which is promising for the ultimate goal of inferring celiac disease state based on TCR sequencing of circulating T cells.
Additional information
Contact the research support staff.