Clinical Immunology, Neuropharmacology and Drug Development

Immunomics

Immunomics is the study of immune system regulation and response to pathogens using genome-wide approaches. With the rise of genomic and proteomic technologies, scientists have been able to visualize biological networks and infer interrelationships between genes and/or proteins; recently, these technologies have been used to help better understand how the immune system functions and how it is regulated. Two thirds of the genome is active in one or more immune cell types and less than 1% of genes are uniquely expressed in a given type of cell. Therefore, it is critical that the expression patterns of these immune cell types be deciphered in the context of a network, and not as an individual, so that their roles are correctly characterized and related to one another.

Defects of the immune system such as

• Autoimmune diseases
• immunodeficiency
• malignancies can benefit from genomic insights on pathological processes.