Mapping the

Immune Landscape of the CSF

Founded 2025

The International Collaborative CSF Study Group (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 →
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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