MRC AMED - Study of the T cell Response During Cryptococcal Meningitis Using New Tools

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Fungi are a major cause of ill-health in humans; hundreds of millions of people suffer from skin and mucosal fungal infections every year, while life-threatening invasive fungal infections cause more deaths around the world than malaria and some types of cancer. These life-threatening invasive fungal infections are a particular cause for concern, because we have limited antifungal drugs to treat them, diagnosis is very difficult and there are no fungal vaccines. Knowledge of how protective immune responses against fungi are controlled can help us to design vaccines and immune-based treatments for these infections. Yet, compared to bacteria and viruses, fungi are poorly studied and only a few research groups in the world have the expertise to understand how the immune system deals with fungi. Fungal infection of the brain and central nervous system (meningitis) is the most lethal form of invasive fungal disease. The most common fungal brain infection is cryptococcal meningitis, caused by the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans, which mostly affects people with weakened immune systems in low and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Cryptococcal meningitis is not easily treated; 4 out of every 5 patients with this disease die from it. New treatment strategies and diagnostics are therefore urgently needed, which in turn could potentially improve the social and economic performance of these low/middle-income countries by improving the population's health. The goal of our research is to better understand how the immune system develops long-term specific protection against Cryptococcus neoformans. For this, we have developed animal models that allow us to track immune cells that specifically react to C. neoformans, allowing us to observe their behaviour during infection and understand what they need to protect against disease, research which is not yet feasible to perform in humans. This work will be a collaborative project that will take place in Birmingham (UK) and Tohoku (Japan), in order to take advantage of our combined resources and expertise. As a team, we are best positioned to answer fundamental questions about how long-term antifungal immunity develops, which in turn will help us to determine what treatments will work best for cryptococcal meningitis thus helping to reduce the impact of this devastating disease on human health.