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A more detailed and comprehensive analysis of the immune system will reveal basic and translational insights and may lead to development of new therapeutic strategies. In this months joint Focus with Nature Immunology, featured articles describe the new technologies and computational approaches that enable this sort of high-dimensional characterization of components of the immune system. www.nature.com/focus/ high_dimensional_immune_analysis Artwork by Lewis Long.
In an effort to rein in costs and galvanize its discovery effort, Merck is following the industry vogue for externalizing early-stage R&D. Is it going to cast its net far and wide enough?
Emerging technologies are broadening our understanding of the human immune system, but capitalizing on their application will likely require philosophical and practical changes to the way research is done.
Davis and Newell explain how cytometry, and single-cell and sequencing methodologies can be used to characterize human T-cell responses in health and disease.
Georgiou and colleagues discuss rapidly evolving methods for high-throughput sequencing of the antibody repertoire, and how the resulting data may be applied to answer basic and translational research questions.
Bispecifics by orthogonal interfaces To improve correct antibody heavy-light chain pairing during bispecific antibody assembly, Lewis et al. design antibody heavy and light chains with orthogonal interfaces.
New technologies enable analysis of the extraordinarily diverse and polymorphic components of the immune system–especially the human immune system–at a level of unprecedented detail. Reviews and a Commentary specially commissioned by Nature Biotechnology and Nature Immunology discuss these new methodologies, and how they may be applied to track immune status in health and disease, as well as to reveal new basic immunological insight. A Correspondence describing an initiative to design tools and resources to facilitate these high-dimensional analyses is also included.