In-vitro recapitulation of NOD murine gestational tolerogenic immune niche using splenocytes & JAR trophoblast cell line
Biomedical Engineering
Omar Al Bukhari
Abstract
My project consists of an in-vitro model of encapsulated JAR Trophoblast cells cultured with excised NOD mouse splenocytes post-diabetic onset for 72 hours used to mimic pregnancy in mice prone to spontaneous autoimmune diabetes onset. The inspiration for this project stems from pregnancy in animals which induces a tolerogenic immune environment that could potentially be manipulated or used to delay/prevent the onset of autoimmune diseases; which are often driven by inappropriate immune activation. The overarching goal of this project is to characterise the potential change in immune niche of these activated, post-diabetes mouse splenocytes within this in-vitro model using Flow Cytometry to gain a cellular, phenotypic understanding of the induced immune changes triggered by this simplified in-vitro pregnancy model.