Research Projects

There is an urgent need for both novel treatments and vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, which requires an understanding of protective anti-viral immunity. For such intracellular viral pathogens, there is an emerging appreciation of the importance of long-lived cellular immunity for both viral clearance and generation of protective memory responses. Critical early events shaping anti-viral T cells include cytokine signals from innate cells, such as macrophages, and the presentation of antigen from professional antigen presenting cells, such as dendritic cells. Other pulmonary infections caused by viruses or bacteria cause profound life-threatening immune paralysis, with macrophages and dendritic cells unable to perform these functions. As the ability of dendritic cells to present antigen and provide appropriate signals to T cells is a key step in initial activation and subsequent reactivation of virus-specific cells, aspects of immune paralysis will likely have profound effects on cellular immunity and antibody production. This project will enrol local patient cohorts to investigate whether prolonged immune dysfunction occurs after COVID-19 infection and whether this is associated with impaired generation of immune memory to SARS-CoV-2.

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