IMMUNA
In one week, I turned a biological question into a journal-ready paper and reproducible biomarker.
Core trick
A 17-gene naive CD4 T-cell score is validated across independent cohorts, then CRISPRi knockdowns map regulators of the aging signal.
Description
In one week, I turned a biological question into a journal-ready paper and reproducible biomarker. IMMUNA-CD4 is a compact 17-gene measure of immune aging in naive CD4 T cells. I developed it using several cohorts and validated it in an independent population. It tracks age and is also linked to immune health after accounting for age. I then tested the biomarker in a genome-scale CRISPRi screen. This created a map of genes that may affect the measured aging signal. The final project includes a complete paper, figures, Source Data, analysis code, provenance, and a verified reproducible build.
README excerpt
# IMMUNA-CD4: Measuring Immune Aging and Mapping Its Regulators **A journal-ready research paper built in one week with Claude Science and Claude Code.** *Naive CD4 T cells encode a compact transcriptomic biomarker of immune age* This project was created for the **Research track of Built with Claude: Life Sciences**. Our goal was deliberately ambitious: start from a biological question and finish the week with a complete paper ready for scientific-journal submission—not only a notebook or a promising preliminary result. ## What we built and found Measuring biological aging is difficult, yet measurement is essential for testing what actually improves health. We developed **IMMUNA-CD4**, an interpretable 17-gene score of immune aging measured in naive CD4⁺ T cells. A literature-informed precursor of 101 module memberships across 99 genes was organised into six signed modules and distilled across three cohorts to 17 unique genes, then frozen before evaluation in OneK1K. In the locked independent test, IMMUNA-CD4 tracked age in 950 donors at full gene coverage (*r* = 0.52). Larger published clocks were stronger age correlates, which we report directly; IMMUNA-CD4's contribution is its compact, interpretable and fully mapped readout. The score also associated with poorer immune health after age adjustment. Finally, projecting the frozen signature into a genome-scale primary-CD4 CRISPRi Perturb-seq screen produced a map of candidate regulators. These perturbation results are