The Study of Immune Response to Pathogens Using Monoclonal Antibodies

Goals / Objectives
The Washington State University (WSU) has developed an e vivo platform to characterize the immune response to pathogens or vaccines candidates for the analysis of the elicited cellular immune response, using autologous target cells. This collaborative research project seeks to apply this technique to the analysis of immune response elicited during Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus (FMDV) infection and after vaccination with the different vaccine platforms currently under investigation at ARS, PIADC.

Project Methods
Using antibodies developed and characterized by WSU Monoclonal Antibody Center, different cell populations from the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), including three different types of antigen-presenting cells (APCs), blood derived dendritic cells (bDCs), monocyte-derived dendritic cells (moDCs) and macrophages (M'), will be isolated and differentiated. Those populations will be used to present the FMDV antigen to stimulate naÃ¯ve and primed T cells. With newly identified reagents, phenotype and functional activity characterization of different T cells subsets will allow for identification of specific memory or effector CD4 and/or CD8 T cells that proliferate in response to stimulation before and after vaccination and compare response of protected vs non-protected animals. We will use these reagents to characterize the functional activity of memory CD4 helper and CD8 cytotoxic T cells that develop ex vivo following stimulation of PBMCs from vaccinated animals to determine kinetics and quality of the T-cell responses. This will include determining the cytokine expression profile and effector activity of memory CD4 and CD8 T cells proliferating in response to stimulation with antigen primed APC. This technology will be stablished as toolbox to systematically analyze several aspects of the immune response elicited by multiple vaccine platforms currently under development.