Jason Fairbank Nideffer

Type I regulatory T (Tr1) cells have been implicated as suppressors of pathogenic inflammation and mediators of clinical immunity to malaria. However, there remain many unanswered questions about the functions of Tr1 cells and their contribution to long-term tolerogenic memory. Unifying clinical and systems immunology, I will leverage pediatric samples collected from an ongoing clinical study in Uganda and use single-cell genomics to study how transcriptional programs, clonality, and epigenetics of Tr1 cells evolve following malaria. Our study will reveal the functions, ontogeny, and memory potential of Tr1 cells, informing host-directed therapies for malaria and demystify an enigmatic cell population.