Regulating the production of high affinity antibody forming cells during the germinal centre reaction.

作为对感染的反应，身体会产生抗体。这些抗体在帮助清除感染和保持我们的健康方面非常重要。更重要的是，免疫系统会“记住”这些过去的感染。这意味着，当我们再次接触像麻疹病毒这样的传染病时，不会发生疾病。这是因为最初清除感染的抗体仍在制造中，以防止或中和新的感染或毒素。因此，这些抗体的持续产生是保持健康的重要组成部分。当我们接种疫苗时，我们会产生针对疫苗成分的抗体。其中一些成分是真正的感染性物质的一部分。这意味着当我们遇到真正的病毒时，我们已经拥有了防止病毒造成任何损害的抗体。加强免疫是必要的，以确保我们有足够高水平的这些中和抗体。能够理解这些重要的抗体是如何产生的是这项研究项目的中心目标。我们希望，通过了解细胞如何在免疫反应中发挥作用，成为分泌中和抗体的细胞，我们将能够制造出工作更有效、需要更少强化注射、提供更持久保护的疫苗。我们还希望我们能更好地设计疫苗，以便那些目前不起作用的疫苗可以被制造出来。

In response to infection the body makes antibodies. These antibodies are important in helping clear the infection and keeping us healthy. What's more, the immune system 'remembers' these past infections. This means that when we are re-exposed to an infectious agent like measles virus, no disease develops. This is because the antibodies which cleared the infection initially, are still being made and prevent or neutralize the new infection or toxin. The continued production of these antibodies is therefore an important part of staying healthy. When we are vaccinated, we produce antibodies specific for the components of the vaccine. Some of these components are part of the real infectious agent. This means that when we encounter the real virus, we already have antibodies that prevent the virus from doing any damage. Booster immunizations are necessary to make sure we have high enough levels of these neutralizing antibodies. Being able to understand how these important antibodies are made is a central goal of this research project. We hope that by understanding how cells are durected in an immune response to become the kind of cells that secretes neutralizing antibodies, we will be able to make vaccines that work more efficiently, that require fewer booster injections and that give longer lasting protection. We also hope that we can better design vaccines so that those that currently don't work, can be made to do so.