Julie Stockis

Major Achievements

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (2019)
• Bourse d’Excellence WBI-WORLD (2018)

Question

Can we specifically target tissue-resident immune cells for the treatment of non-communicable diseases, such as allergy or cancer?

Research Focus

Tissue-resident immune cells are a diverse group of cells from the immune system that permanently reside in various tissues throughout the body. These cells play a crucial role in maintaining local immune surveillance and response. They are adapted to the specific needs of their respective tissues and perform essential functions, such as rapid recognition of pathogens, tissue repair, and regulation of inflammation, which are crucial for the long-term maintenance of tissue health and homeostasis. In order to achieve these functions, tissue-resident immune cells often engage in intricate communication with neighbouring cells, including epithelial and stromal cells. This crosstalk is critical for coordinated and effective immune responses. Yet, the precise mechanisms underpinning these communications are not well understood, and could be of great interest to develop novel therapies in the context of immune-related diseases.

Our lab approaches this question in the context of tissues harboring non-neoplastic somatic mutations, with a particular interest in the intestine. We hypothesize that clonally expanded, acquired mutations in the non-neoplastic intestinal epithelium disrupt the epithelial-immune homeostatic crosstalk, and that this could contribute to the development of intestinal pathologies. Our lab uses mouse models of intestinal epithelial cell-specific mutations and combines in vivomodels of intestinal diseases to state-of-the-art high parameter flow cytometry, single-cell transcriptomics and in vitro co-culture systems to interrogate the dynamic interplay between mutated epithelial cells and immune cells and its impact on mucosal immunity. We hope that our research will reveal important and novel actionable pathways mediating immune-epithelial cell crosstalk in the gut, thereby contributing to the design or the re-purposing of therapeutics for the treatment of intestinal diseases.

Julie obtained her Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from UCLouvain (Belgium) in 2006. She then joined the lab of Prof. Sophie Lucas at the de Duve Institute (UCLouvain, Belgium), where she obtained her PhD in Biomedical Sciences in 2011 working on the identification of molecular pathways to target regulatory T cells for the immunotherapy of cancer. She stayed in the same lab as an FNRS postdoctoral fellow to follow up on her PhD thesis work and deciphered the mechanism by which regulatory T cells produce the active form of the TGF-b cytokine. Julie then continued her postdoctoral training by joining the lab of Dr. Tim Halim at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute (University of Cambridge, UK) where she focused on tissue immunity, studying the role of tissue-resident immune cells in diverse contexts, ranging from cancer to regeneration and allergy. She came back to the de Duve Institute as a F.R.S-FNRS Research Associate to start her own lab in 2023.

Affiliations

• Group Leader, de Duve Institute
• F.R.S-FNRS Research Associate
• Associate Professor, UCLouvain