The concept of the self has made it possible to think of the organism under the category of identity in order to account for the unity and effectiveness of the system of defense of its integrity. The dualism of self and non-self posits that an organism defends itself by an immune reaction against an external element ("non-self") while sparing the entities recognized as its own ("self").
Projects
The "self/non-self" model is based on the reasoning by analogy long decried by epistemologists, as well as the use of metaphors borrowed from social life, which lead to thinking of the body's self-normativity on the model of a community of competing pathogens (pathogens tolerated by the "self" as endogenous entities) but sufficiently unified to fight against potentially aggressive external agents.
This project is led by Julie Di Cristofaro (PhD, HDR, CR EFS), Christophe Picard, (MD, PhD, HDR, EFS) and Pascal Pedini (PharmD, PhD, EFS), it benefits from many collaborations, including that with the team of Pr Pascal Chanez (APHM, INSERM, C2VN).
Based on the data from the previous project, the main objective of this project is to define the biomarkers particularly involved in the phenomena of tolerance, inflammation and rejection in order to improve the diagnostic and therapeutic management of transfused, grafted or transplanted patients as well as their donor selection.
The immunological safety of transfusions is based, among other things, on the compatibility of erythrocyte blood groups. Today there are about 380 different antigens in 44 systems. More than half of them are considered rare, i.e. their frequency in the general population is less than 4/1000.