Mapping the

Immune Landscape of the CSF

Founded 2025

The ICCSG is an international consortium of clinicians, immunologists, and computational biologists committed to understanding cerebrospinal fluid immunology — from healthy baselines to neurological disease.

Atlas Working Group →
Join the Group

Mission

To define the cellular and molecular landscape of the healthy and diseased CSF — establishing harmonized nomenclature, standardized collection practices, and integrated transcriptomic resources that translate discoveries into clinical tools for patients with neurological disease.

Aim 1: Establish a healthy CSF immune cell reference across age, sex, and physiological state

Aim 2: Harmonize nomenclature by cell type through expert subcommittees

Aim 3: Build and publicly release an integrated, cross-study single-cell atlas

Aim 4: Embed standardized CSF sampling into multi-center clinical trials

Aim 1
Aim 2
Aim 3
Aim 4
20+ INVESTIGATORS

20+ INVESTIGATORS

10+ INSTITUTIONS

6+ COUNTRIES

85K+ CSF CELLS

3 WORKING GROUPS

10+ INSTITUTIONS
6+ COUNTRIES
85K+ CELLS
3 WORKING GROUPS

Founding Members

  • Gregory Wu

    Washington University in St. Louis

  • David Hafler

    Yale University

  • Serena Spudich

    Yale University

  • Philip De Jager

    Columbia University

  • Heinz Wiendl

    University of Münster

  • Nicholas Schwab

    University of Münster

  • Bernhard Hemmer

    Technical University of Munich

  • G. Meyer zu Hörste

    University of Münster

  • Shelli Farhadian

    Yale University

  • Yomokazu Sumida

    Yale University

Founding Members

W
Gregory Wu
Washington University
St. Louis
H
David Hafler
Yale University
S
Serena Spudich
Yale University
D
Philip De Jager
Columbia University
W
Heinz Wiendl
Univ. of Münster
S
Nicholas Schwab
Univ. of Münster
H
Bernhard Hemmer
TU Munich
M
G. Meyer zu Hörste
Univ. of Münster
F
Shelli Farhadian
Yale University
S
Tomokazu Sumida
Yale University
G
Jared Goodman
Washington University
St. Louis
R
Catarina Raposo
Industry Partner
S
David Schafflick
Univ. of Münster
G
Özgün Gökce
Ludwig Maximilian Univ.
M
Will Macnair
Swiss Institute of
Bioinformatics

+ Claudia Cantoni, Brian Edelson, Johanna Knoeferle, Alyaa Mohamed, Tilman Schneider-Hohendorf, Yoshiaki Yasumizu, Ayshwarya Subramanian and additional collaborators

Meetings History & Upcoming

April 2, 2025 · Virtual

Founding Meeting

Inaugural discussion on standardizing nomenclature for CSF immune cells, with focus on myeloid and microglia-like populations. Formation of the group and multi-layer organizational structure proposed.

Complete
May 1, 2025 · Virtual

Organizational Questionnaire Review

Review of member survey results. Discussion of challenges in healthy-state definition, cross-tissue integration, and ontogeny. Short-term goal set: opinion pieces on myeloid and CNS macrophages.

Complete
June 26, 2025 · Virtual

PNS Atlas & Cross-Tissue Myeloid

Presentations on polyneuropathy scRNA-seq atlas (Meyer zu Hörste) and cross-tissue macrophage annotation (Subramanian). Group renamed to ICCSG to reflect international scope. Perspective piece discussed.

Complete
October 30, 2025 · Virtual

B Cell Dysfunction in HIV & ISNI Proposal

Presentation on B cell features in ART-suppressed HIV (Filippidis/Yale). Discussion of perspective draft. Proposal for ISNI as societal trustee infrastructure for the group.

Complete
2026 · TBD

Atlas Working Group Launch

Formal launch of the integrated atlas working group. Review of data standards and metadata schema. Initial dataset inventory and federated analysis planning.

Upcoming
2026 · Conference TBD

In-Person Meeting

First in-person gathering, timed to a major neuroimmunology or single-cell conference. Subcommittee working sessions for myeloid and lymphoid nomenclature.

Upcoming