BAYLOR RESEARCH INSTITUTE, THE
Grant: $5,292,047 - National Institutes of Health - Sep. 21, 2009
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Award Description: Vaccination represents one of the major successes of medicine as it has spared countless people from polio, tetanus and other acute infections. Yet, improved immunization strategies are needed to make vaccines for microbes that cause considerable morbidity . To identify novel strategies for protective vaccination we will study dendritic cells (DCs) which specialized to capture and process antigens in vivo, presenting the MHC molecules to T cells. DCs also present antigens to B cells. Maturation and subsets allow DCs to control diverse immune responses. Our long-term goal is to develop novel human vaccines based on in vivo DC-targeting. Our hypothesis is that Human Dendritic cells subsets express distinct uptake and signaling receptors that need to be mobilized in concert to provide durable immune responses leading to increased resistance to microbes at the mucosal port of entry. To this end, we have made high affinity monoclonal antibodies against several DC surface molecules and conjugated them to several influenza virus proteins. We have shown that antigens delivered to a single type of human DCs through different surface lectins induce distinct types of antigen-specific CD4+ T cell responses. The current focus is on mucosal immunity because mucosa is a major site of invasion as well as replication of pathogens, including influenza virus. Thus, the induction/activation of two major effectors, B cells and CD8+ T cells, with mucosal homing capacity is expected to limit viral replication, resulting in reduced disease burden. Furthermore, induction of CD4+ T cells with helper functions for B cells or CTLs will enhance the longevity of memory cells and the magnitude and the quality of mucosal homing effectors. We view the candidate vaccine as a bispecific antibody a) binding to two different cell surface antigens, such as specific lectin for antigen delivery and CD40 for activation, or to two different DC subsets, to harness their capacity to induce different type of immune effectors, and in addition b)TLR agonists as DC activators. We propose four projects and two technical development components which will be supported by six cores.
Project Description: The aims of this project are to 1) characterize the pathophysiology and immune parameters of the new Swine Flu Influenza virus infection and 2) Generate effective vaccines the prevent infectin with the new Swine Influenza Virus. At BIIR we will analyze the immune response to the swine influenza virus in vivo and in vitro. We are constructing and purifying recombinant vaccines that carry Swine Influenza Antigens. At Tulane, the vaccine will be tested in vivo in non-human primates. Nationwide Children's will obtain samples humans subjects with acute infection to help define the immune alteration of the flu. Mt Sinai will analyze strain specific antibody levels and provide influenza strains to BIIR.
Infrastructure Description: N/A
Jobs Summary: New jobs: (1) 1.0 FTE Post doctoral fellow who will perform mechanistic studies with the swine flu virus. (2) .33 FTE Post doctoral fellow to assist with analyzing the genomic data. Jobs preserved: (3) 50% of a PhD Research Associate who will undertake the construction of the DC-targeting expression vectors. (4&5) 1.5 FTE Research assistants will extract the RNA and process the microarray samples. (Total jobs reported: 0)
Project Status: Less Than 50% Completed
This award's data was last updated on Sep. 21, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.
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