Vaccines generate an immune response by mimicking an invading pathogen, writes Dr Roslyn Kemp,
The cells of the immune system respond as they would to a normal pathogen by increasing in number, killing the pathogen or infected cells, and then contracting to form a memory population.
These memory cells exist in a semi-armed state and respond to a re-infection quickly and efficiently to destroy the pathogen before it can cause disease.
The majority of effective vaccines stimulate an antibody response, but many diseases, including cancer and HIV, are only resolved by a strong T cell response.
The generation of a large number of effective memory CD8+ T cells is therefore a key goal for modern vaccine technology.
The School of Pharmacy at the University of Otago has developed a range of novel vaccine delivery systems all with the aim of enhancing the activation of CD8+ T cells to generate a strong initial response, but they have not yet studied the best way to improve a memory response.
As a new member of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, my international research experience in studying the generation, maintenance and function of memory T cells puts me in an ideal position to undertake a collaborative study with Dr Sarah Hook at the School of Pharmacy to link vaccine delivery with memory T cell responses.
Our experiments will provide information on optimizing a vaccine protocol to study basic memory T cell biology, as well as a framework to study the generation of memory T cell responses to infections and diseases such as cancer.
• Dr Roslyn Kemp, from the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, was recently awarded a bequest from the Otago Medical School Bequest Funds to carry out research on Improving T Cell Memory Responses to Vaccination.