Date/Time
Date(s) - 26/02/2026
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Categories
Do you like scientific discussion? And how about Pizza?
If we gained your attention with ‘scientific’, or at least with ‘Pizza’, then you are already looking forward to the right event!
Pizza Club is a regularly held Journal Club event co-organized by The Representatives of the Doctoral Programme in Systems and Molecular Biomedicine, part of the Doctoral School in Science and Engineering (DSSE); and the Uni.lu student association ISCB RSG Luxembourg.
In short, Students (PhD candidates) present a scientific paper (+- 20 mins) they find interesting or that inspired the development of their individual PhD project (doesn’t need to be authored by the speaker).
There will be an open discussion round after each scientific presentation (2-3 students per event), followed by informal and fun chatting with some pizzas around!
Abstract
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2024.11.016
Multiple sclerosis is a heterogeneous neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disease, and this article shows how single-nucleus RNA-seq can be used to define data-driven disease categories rather than relying solely on clinical labels. By analyzing 632,000 nuclei from 156 MS and control brain samples, the authors build an atlas of both white and gray matter and show that these regions have distinct, cell type specific transcriptional responses to MS. They find that lesion subtypes differ mainly in cellular composition, whereas most gene-expression variability is between patients, allowing individuals to be grouped into a small number of molecular subtypes defined by coordinated white matter glial systems. These glial “endotypes” illustrate how transcriptomic patterns can stratify MS patients into biologically meaningful categories, laying the foundation for future precision medicine where treatment decisions are guided by patient-specific brain and, eventually, blood or CSF signatures rather than broad clinical phenotypes.
Presenter:
Nikhilesh VASANTHA KUMAR
I’m a first-year PhD student in the Biomedical Data Science (BDS) group. My research focuses mainly on using omics data to investigate the molecular mechanisms of Multiple Sclerosis and to explore potential targets for drug development.
Before starting my PhD, I worked on cross-species omics analysis as well as image and video segmentation, and I now build on that experience in pattern recognition and modelling to analyze complex biomedical data.
Moreover, each presentation of peer-reviewed papers will be rewarded by 0.5 ECTS!
If we attracted your interest by now, feel free to join the monthly Pizza Club, either as part of Audience or as a registered Speaker. For the latter, please kindly use this form to sign up as an upcoming Speaker, by choosing your category of paper and desired month to present. Looking forward to seeing you at the next Pizza Club!