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

免疫系统拥有几种对抗病毒和癌症的机制。其中一种机制是招募抗病毒或抗癌杀伤细胞。这些杀伤细胞被称为树突状细胞(DC)的特殊细胞招募。DC分布在全身各处，可以检测到病毒或癌细胞的存在。当它们这样做时，它们会从病毒或癌细胞中取出大块，将它们分解成称为抗原的小块，并将这些抗原展示在它们的表面，在那里它们可以被杀伤细胞看到。这启动了一种免疫反应，由杀伤细胞寻找并摧毁病毒和癌细胞。我们正试图利用DC启动免疫反应的能力，以设计更有效的疫苗来对抗病毒和癌症。我们的目标是提供直接针对DC并诱导保护性杀伤细胞形成的疫苗。这些战略要求我们克服两个问题。首先，我们拥有不同类型的DC，它们发挥着不同的功能，但我们不知道哪种类型的DC在招募杀伤细胞方面最有效，或者为什么。第二个问题是，我们需要了解哪种疫苗设计在促进抗原呈递方面最有效，这些抗原将被用来诱导杀伤细胞。这项研究项目的目标是了解我们应该如何将抗原输送到哪种DC类型，以产生最好的疫苗。

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.