Mapping the
Immune Landscape of the CSF
Founded in 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.
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
10+ INSTITUTIONS
6+ COUNTRIES
85K+ CSF CELLS
3 WORKING GROUPS
30+
INVESTIGATORS
10+
INSTITUTIONS
6+
COUNTRIES
85K+
CELLS
5
WORKING GROUPS
Steering Committee
Claudia Cantoni
Barrow Neurological Institute
Tomokazu S. Sumida
Yale School of Medicine
Brian T. Edelson
Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine
Gregory F. Wu
Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine
Shelli F. Farhadian
Yale School of Medicine
Philip L. De Jager
Columbia University School of Medicine
Gerd Meyer Zu Hörste
University Hospital Münster
Previous & Upcoming Meetings
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.
CompleteOrganizational 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.
CompletePNS 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.
CompleteB 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.
CompleteAtlas 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.
UpcomingIn-Person Meeting
First in-person gathering, timed to a major neuroimmunology or single-cell conference. Subcommittee working sessions for myeloid and lymphoid nomenclature.
Upcoming