Characterisation of the biochemical and cell biological mechanisms of cross-presentation in dendritic cells

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The immune system possesses several mechanisms to fight viruses and cancer. One of these mechanisms consists of recruiting anti-virus or anti-cancer killer cells. These killer cells are recruited by specialized cells known as Dendritic Cells (DC). The DC are distributed all over the body, and can detect the presence of viruses or cancer cells. When they do, they take up chunks of the virus or cancer cells, break them into small pieces called antigens, and display these antigens on their surface, where they can be seen by the killer cells. This initiates an immune response whereby the killer cells seek and destroy the viruses and cancer cells. We are trying to harness the ability of DC to initiate immune responses in order to design more efficient vaccines to fight viruses and cancer. Our goal is to deliver vaccines that will directly target the DC and induce the formation of protective killer cells. These strategies require us to overcome two problems. The first is that we possess different types of DC, which play distinct functions, but we do not know which type is the most effective at recruiting killer cells, or why. The second problem is that we need to understand which vaccine design is the most effective at promoting presentation of the antigens that will be used to induce killer cells. The goal of this research project is to learn how we should deliver antigens to which DC type to generate the best possible vaccine.