A Parenteral Vaccine to Induce Mucosal T and B Cell Immunity

Steven Patterson of Imperial College in London will develop a new vaccine strategy that exploits the property of a protein, retinaldehyde dehydrogenase (RALDH), that stimulates immune cells to travel to the gut mucosa and there provide localized immune protection against inhabiting pathogens such as HIV. Using vaccines to generate immune responses specifically at mucosal surfaces such as in the gut or lungs, which are major sites of pathogen entry, is challenging, particularly when the vaccine must be administered with a needle, which delivers it to non-mucosal sites. They will engineer adenoviral vectors to transfer the RALDH gene to dendritic cells, and test whether these cells can then produce the relevant molecules that stimulate T and B cells to home to the gut.