An integrated approach to dissect determinants, risk
factors and
pathways of ageing of the immune system
Project structure and organization
To achieve these objectives Immunoageing is organized in Work Packages (WPs):
WP1. Measuring the influence of ageing on the circulating human immunome and dissecting the genetic and environmental factors contributing to its variation throughout life.
Task 1.1 Establishing cell population, cytokine, and antibody levels in a large ageing cohort (conducted by CNR)
Task 1.2 Analysing the influence of ageing on the blood immunome and dissecting the main heritable and modifiable environmental factors contributing to its variation throughout life (conducted by CNR)
WP2. Dissecting the bases of ‘healthy’ autoreactivity during ageing
Task 2.1 Establishing the breadth, prevalence, specificity and level of autoantibodies in general population ageing cohorts (conducted by UCAM in collaboration with CNR)
Task 2.2 Charactering B and T cell repertoire size and diversity in general population ageing cohorts
(conducted by UCAM in collaboration with CNR)
Task 2.3 Characterizing the blood virome in general population ageing cohorts (conducted by UCAM in collaboration with CNR)
Task 2.4 Assessing the impact of blood virome on B & T cell repertoire and on the immune traits assessed in WP1, and clarifying the consequences of all these variables and of genetic variation on ‘subclinical’ autoreactivity during ageing (conducted by UCAM in collaboration with CNR)
WP3. Systematic analysis of cell specific transcriptional and functional properties and their clinical impact
Task 3.1 Cell sorting to obtain homogenous subpopulations (conducted by UIBK in collaboration with CNR & UCAM)
Task 3.2 Testing cell function (conducted by CNR, UCAM & UIBK)
Task 3.3 Whole RNA sequencing based expression profiles of ageing-cells (conducted by CNR)
Task 3.4 Pathway analysis and assessment of the biomedical and pharmaceutical relevance of the findings (conducted by CNR & UCAM)
WP4. Project Management
Task 4.1 To establish an organizational structure and supervision of progress (conducted by CNR in collaboration with UCAM)
Task 4.2 Administrative Management (conducted by CNR in collaboration with ALTA).
Task 4.3 Risk evaluation and corrective actions (conducted by CNR in collaboration with UCAM).
Task 4.4 IPR (conducted by CNR in collaboration with ALTA).
WP5. Dissemination and Training
Task 5.1 Dissemination of results (conducted by all Partners).
Task 5.2 Exploitation of the project results (conducted by all Partners)
Task 5.2 Training (conducted by all Partners)