Dorien Salet (Radboud), Trained hypercoagulability: an immunological approach to coagulation

Team meeting: Talk by Dorien Salet (MD | PhD candidate Immunothrombosis, Radboud University Medical Centre, The Netherlands)

Dorien will be our host for the entire week (April 1-6, 2023). Please contact Thomas Pradeu if you’d like to meet her.

Abstract:

Received ideas about the immune system as consisting of two separate subsystems, adaptive and innate, have been worn down over previous years. One important catalyst has been the extension of immunological memory to previously uncharted territory, such as trained immunity in the innate immune system. These and other scientific developments have been reflected in philosophical analysis, leading to new theories of immunity and immunological memory. Interestingly, there are also parallels between the immune system and the coagulation system. Evolutionarily as well as functionally, there is a lot of overlap between these two systems. Typical immunological functions such as defense are also performed by elements of the coagulation system, and typical coagulation receptors as well as molecules are able to signal cells in an immunological fashion. As philosophy of immunology has conceptualized the extension of the immune system into other areas, this overlap between coagulation and immunology raises the question: can we apply concepts pertaining to immunology to coagulation? Does this provide new perspectives on diseases in which coagulation and immunology overlap, such as the antiphospholipid syndrome? One example of this could be the targeting of trained immunity as a mechanism leading to a procoagulant phenotype of monocytes, a.k.a ‘trained hypercoagulability’.