Irma Tindemans received NRS Travel Grant (1)

Irma Tindemans, MSc

PHd-Student
Department of Pulmonary Medicine
ErasmusMC, Rotterdam

By receiving the NRS young investigators travel grant, I was able to attend the EMBO conference on Lymphocyte signaling in Bertinoro, Italy. Within the conference program, there was a strong focus on signal transduction in T lymphocytes. This program was very interesting to me since my PhD project focuses on the role of Notch signaling in the activation and differentiation of Th2 cells in asthma. In addition, there were some talks about signaling receptors on other leukocytes, including B cells and eosinophils. Attending those talks helped me increase my overall knowledge regarding signaling pathways in the immune system.

During the conference there were only plenary sessions, with many invited speakers with outstanding knowledge in the field of lymphocyte signaling. Since only a limited amount of attendees were selected, the meeting was small which made the conference very informative and encouraged interaction. My abstract was selected for a poster presentation, whereby I showed the results of interfering with several components of the Notch signaling pathway (including RBPJ in T cells and Jagged molecules on dendritic cells) on the pathogenesis of house-dust mite induced allergic airway inflammation in mice. During the poster session, I was able to discuss the results on my poster with many experts in the field of T cell signaling. These discussions gave me many new ideas and insights for new experiments for my research project such as other molecules, parameters and time points that I could look at. In addition, by visiting other poster presentations, I learned a lot about other molecules and signaling cascades that are important for the induction of Th2 cells.