Mapping intestinal maturation and immune colonisation (MIMIC study)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Mapping the foundations of infant intestinal maturation and immune colonisation with application to paediatric disease
IRAS ID
304112
Contact name
Paul R V Johnson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford / Research Governance, Ethics & Assurance
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
The intestinal barrier is a vitally important interface through which an individual will interact with the outside world. In early childhood a number of important events occur in the intestine - immune cells encounter bacteria for the first time, the intestine will be exposed to diet and digestion will begin. Problems with these processes can cause disease, but very little is known about what the normal process is. This is made more challenging due to the scarcity of tissue collected in this age group.
This project will seek to build on previous work undertaken by the team that has used methods to study the genetic expression of individual cells. This has characterised the intestine at unprecedented resolution in human development and adult inflammatory bowel disease to reveal causes of dysregulation, but placing normal events and disease processed in childhood has not been possible.
This study will seek to reveal new information about the intestine in early childhood development, by collecting samples including tissue, blood and stool from up to 250 children already having intestinal surgery for a range of conditions as part of their medical care. This will encompass different stages of maturity and disease contexts, along with a sub-group undergoing longitudinal sampling if having a future surgical procedure.
The samples will be studied with recently developed techniques that can map the features of each single cell and look at the interactions between cells, and link this with samples from the blood and stool to reveal new information on what constitutes normal maturation at this time, and how it changes in disease. It is hoped this information will identify the specific cell types involved in rare paediatric diseases, which can then be validated in already collected pathology samples, and could identify new ways to understand or treat these rare conditions.REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 2
REC reference
22/NS/0027
Date of REC Opinion
25 Feb 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion