Touil Hanane

I am a postdoctoral research scientist with an extensive expertise in immunology and neuroscience, particularly in human translational neuroimmunology as it applies to Multiple Sclerosis (MS). My main interest is to understand cellular and molecular mechanisms involved during different stages of MS, particularly during the progressive stages of the disease that are poorly understood. My current goal is to characterize the immunosenescence biomarkers and their impact on MS disease progression in a large scale manner, taking into consideration both genetic susceptibility and environmental factors. During my PhD training, I focused on characterizing the glial:immune cell interaction and its potential contribution to subpial cortical injury, which is now thought to importantly contribute to progressive MS. My work demonstrated that abnormally high pro-inflammatory B cell subsets may sustain ongoing cascades of inflammation and CNS injury, through a cross-talk with astrocytes, microglia and infiltrating macrophage. I have a broad experience with a variety of techniques, including immunological-based assays such as: multiparametric flow cytometry (16 colors), human glial cell isolation and culture, human PBMC culture, lymphocytes beads-enrichment, antigen-presentation assays, T-cell proliferation assays, immune:glial cell co-culture experiments (e.g. transwells), ELISA, molecular biology techniques, and immunohistochemistry. Recently, I have been learning how to computationally analyze large data-sets of single cell RNA-sequencing using Cell Ranger and R packages. My publications include a first author publication (Touil H et al., journal of neuroinflammation 2018), another first author publication about to be submitted (Touil H et al., 2020) and over 9 other publications based on collaborative work, amongst them papers published in prestigious journals (Li R et al., Sci Trans Med 2015, Pikor N et al., Immunity 2015), two reviews and a book chapter. In the next coming weeks, part of my post-doctoral trainig I will be submitting a technical report for cryopreservation of CSF cells to be used for single cell RNA sequencing where I am the lead author (Touil H et al.,) and two research papers analyzing single cell RNA sequencing data from CSF of MS patients (Touil H et al., and Roostaei T* & Touil H* et al.,*:co-first authors). Overall, my efforts in collaboration with others shed light on novel glial:immune cell interactions that appear to initiate a pro-inflammatory cascade associated with compartmentalized inflammation in the progressive stages of MS. However, the particular molecular signature of disease progression remains unknown yet important for further investigation as it will undoubtedly provide clues to the immunologic and neurodegenerative driving forces of progressive MS. Combining multiparametric flow cytometry to next-generation sequencing for characterization of our unique longitudinal samples (PBMC and CSF cells) from a large MS and matching control cohorts, will enable us to reveal key immunosenescence biomarkers associated with disease progression. Our findings can guide the development of novel diagnosis and personalized therapies based on the immunosenescence markers, and may improve existing treatment interventions.