Immunology of Marek's disease virus infection in the chicken

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Animal infectious diseases are of great importance to human and animal health. Moreover, these diseases impose significant economic losses to the food animal industry.   Marek's disease (MD) is a disease of chickens caused by a virus, Marek's disease virus or MDV, and marked by formation of lymphomas, or cancer of immune system cells. This disease provides a unique model for studying the role of immune system and the genes, which control the immune mediators, in conferring resistance to disease. Resistance to MD is genetically controlled and several genes have been shown to play a role in immunity. Moreover, this is probably the first cancer against which a commercial vaccine became available. However, little is known about the immunological mechanisms of resistance to disease. The proposed program is intended to investigate, at the molecular and cellular levels, induction and regulation of chicken immune response against MDV infection. Cells of the immune system, such as T cells, have been shown to be important in protection against viral insults. The objectives of this program are: 1- To elucidate the role of T cells in immunity against MD, 2- To understand how and where T cells see MDV and respond to it, 3- To study the genes that control T cell immune response to MDV, 4- To investigate the cause and effect relationship between genes and immunity to MD. It is expected that findings of the proposed studies will expand our understanding of host-pathogen interactions and will also layout the foundation for future studies aimed at genetic selection for disease resistance and design of prophylactic strategies against infectious disease, which take into account host genetic constitution.