Noncanonical epitope recognition by CD8+ T lymphocytes

这项拟议的研究计划将在免疫学和疫苗设计领域提供重要的基本见解。许多疾病的疫苗仍然难以捉摸，该项目旨在提高我们对病原体内作为免疫系统杀伤T细胞靶点的精确区域的理解。这些区域被称为表位，可能是未来许多疫苗的关键成分。尽管免疫学家已经收集了很多关于这些表位的信息，但最近的研究表明，病原体的一些意想不到的区域是杀伤T细胞的靶点。该项目将通过利用无偏见的程序来评估这些非典型表位对免疫的相对贡献，从而开辟新的领域。

This proposed research program will provide significant fundamental insight in the areas of immunology and vaccine design. Vaccines for many diseases remain elusive, and this project aims to improve our understanding of the precise regions within pathogens that are the targets for the killer T cells of the immune system. These regions, called epitopes, are likely to be key ingredients in many future vaccines. Although immunologists have gathered much information about such epitopes, recent studies have shown that some unexpected regions of pathogens are targets for killer T cells. This project will break new ground by utilising unbiased procedures to assess the relative contribution of these noncanonical epitopes to immunity.