Biology

Dr. Veena Patil
Vaccine Discovery Division, La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, La Jolla, USA

Abstract:

The acquisition of immunological memory to infections is a hallmark of protective immunity and hence forms the basis for vaccinations. During the evolutionarily conserved process of T cell immunological memory development, the naive T cells that have not previously encountered antigen, differentiate during the primary infection into memory T cells that have specialized functions in immune defense to a later infection with the same pathogen. Each pathogen elicits a specialized memory subset and once formed this specialized T cell memory can provide life-long immunity to the same pathogen. I will discuss the molecular features of CD4+ cytotoxic memory T cells formed in response to viral infections (dengue virus, cytomegalovirus) and CD4+ T helper memory subsets formed in response to bacterial infection (Mycobacterium tuberculosis). The simultaneous single-cell transcriptome and T cell antigen receptor analysis of these protective immune memory subsets revealed the heterogeneity and identified sub-populations. Understanding the biology of such specialized memory subsets may pave the way for developing strategies to boost durable immune responses following vaccination against these pathogens.