What's "self" got to do with it: thymic imprinting of T cell effector function

Heather J. Melichar, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
McGill University
Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Institute

This conference is hosted by Tarik Möröy, PhD. This conference is part of the 2024-2025 IRCM conference calendar.

About this conference
Naive CD4 and CD8 T cells have traditionally been viewed as functionally homogeneous populations despite the vast diversity of their T cell receptors. While it is well known that T cell receptor interactions with self-peptide are essential for T cell development in the thymus and survival in the peripheral lymphoid organs, emerging evidence from our group and others suggests that self-peptide encounters also play a critical role in shaping functional biases among individual naive T cells: the strength of the basal interactions between the T cell receptor and self-peptides influences the kinetics with which an individual naive T cell will respond once activated as well as the cytokines it produces, its effector fate, and its persistence in the context of antigen challenge.

We will explore when and where these functional biases are imprinted and discuss how insights from these fundamental studies could inform the development of more effective T cell therapies.

About Heather Melichar
Dr. Melichar pursued her doctoral studies at the University of Massachusetts Medical School focusing on the molecular mechanisms influencing T cell fate decisions. She then moved to the west coast and began a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she developed novel platforms to study the development of both murine and human T cells in situ.

In 2014, Dr. Melichar established her independent research group at the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital Research Center affiliated with the University of Montreal. After almost 10 years in this position, Dr. Melichar was recruited to the Goodman Cancer Institute at McGill University where her laboratory continues to study the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate the development and function of T cells using insights from these studies to improve the efficacy of cellular therapies.

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