Dissecting Mechanisms Of Generalised Immune Activation And Cellular Dysfunction In HIV Infection
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$422,576.00
Summary
How HIV infection compromises the host immune system is still not well understood. We will study how HIV surface proteins contribute to heightened immune activation during chronic infection. This generalised activation eventually leads to dysfunctional cellular immune responses and loss of partial control of infection. We will additionally investigate the extent and impact of the loss of functional immune responses in chronic HIV infection.
Population Dynamics Of Tissue-specific Effector And Regulatory CD4+ T Cells
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$394,250.00
Summary
Survival of white blood cells in the body is an active process and is important for the maintainence of a T cell population which can recognise a wide variety of foreign antigens. At present the fate of T lymphocytes which recognise self antigens is unclear. Knowledge of the survival kinetics of self-reactive T lymphocytes and the mechanism by which they are regulated in the normal individual is crucial to be able to control the development of various diseases, including autoimmune diseases. Fro ....Survival of white blood cells in the body is an active process and is important for the maintainence of a T cell population which can recognise a wide variety of foreign antigens. At present the fate of T lymphocytes which recognise self antigens is unclear. Knowledge of the survival kinetics of self-reactive T lymphocytes and the mechanism by which they are regulated in the normal individual is crucial to be able to control the development of various diseases, including autoimmune diseases. From our previous studies of autoimmune gastritis we have generated cell lines of lymphocytes that recognise stomach-specific antigens and with these unique reagents we will perform experiments to determine the fate of these self-reactive T cells in a normal individual. Also we will determine the impact of different amounts of the tissue antigens on the survival and activation of self-reactive T cells, and finally how a special class of lymphocytes, know as regulatory lymphocytes, act in vivo to control the activity of self-reactive T cells. We will use not only classical immunological approaches to address these issues but also state of the art imaging, to visualise the nature of the cell interactions in living tissues. The information arising from this work will underpin strategies to selectively turn off self-reactive lymphocytes that cause disease, will form the basis of clinical development of cell based therapies to treat autoimmune diseases, and the imaging technologies developed in this grant will have wide applicability to the study of a range of immune responses.Read moreRead less
Viral Antigen Presentation Kinetics And Memory T Cell Inflation
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$503,753.00
Summary
The ageing of the population is one of the major transformations being experienced by Australia’s population which will have major health implications. Recent studies have shown that many elderly individuals display ‘immune risk phenotype’ (IRP) which is characterised by a severely distorted immune system and human cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection. In this project we will investigate the mechanisms by which CMV alters cellular immune system and thus impacts on the host immunity against other path ....The ageing of the population is one of the major transformations being experienced by Australia’s population which will have major health implications. Recent studies have shown that many elderly individuals display ‘immune risk phenotype’ (IRP) which is characterised by a severely distorted immune system and human cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection. In this project we will investigate the mechanisms by which CMV alters cellular immune system and thus impacts on the host immunity against other pathogens.Read moreRead less
Prof Carbone’s laboratory specialises in the study of immunity at the body surfaces. These surfaces include skin and mucosal tissues such as respiratory and gastrointestinal tract, all of which are the common points of entry for a variety of infectious agents. He has found that there exist cells at these peripheral sites that are separate from the immune components that one finds in the blood and, more importantly, that provide a profound level of protection during new infection. He now propose ....Prof Carbone’s laboratory specialises in the study of immunity at the body surfaces. These surfaces include skin and mucosal tissues such as respiratory and gastrointestinal tract, all of which are the common points of entry for a variety of infectious agents. He has found that there exist cells at these peripheral sites that are separate from the immune components that one finds in the blood and, more importantly, that provide a profound level of protection during new infection. He now propose to determine how best to induce this type of peripheral immune protection and how one can exploit these mechanisms for the purpose of infection control.Read moreRead less