Why do we study Immune Age 什麼是免疫年齡?

We are super-interested in defining what is the best way to characterize human immunity and immune health.

By collecting data from healthy individuals and patients, we have defined the normal range for different immune cell populations in the peripheral blood and generated the Immune Age Index that predicts the healthiness of each person’s immunity. Our lab established and published the age-defined normal range of immun cell subsets in the peripheral blood. In addition, our lab used flow cytometry results to phenotype renal failure patients and provided the first example that a flow cytometry-defined comprehensive immune profile independently predicts human lifespan.

Understanding how the immune system ages and how to monitor its aging processes can be very useful for both health and disease management and can be valuable for identifying therapeutic options.

我們對於免疫系統的期待是可以藉由周邊血液的檢測，得知一個人的免疫狀態，進而進行健康管理。藉由數百位健康人與病人的血液，我們已經初步建置台灣人的免疫年齡的預測模型，除此之外，並且使用Principle Component Analysis發現免疫細胞的整體變化可用於預測腎衰竭病人的長期存活率，為全世界第一個直接證明使用免疫細胞圖譜預測人類長期存活率的團隊。