Diagnostic tool not immune to development
An
interest in viral immunology stimulated from her involvement in a UniSA
summer research scholarship project has seen PhD student Erin Curry well
on the way to developing a groundbreaking therapeutic tool.
Her research is focused on investigating the human immune response against fowlpox virus. The virus is naturally carried by chickens and while it can also infect human cells, it does not result in any complications or disease as it is unable to replicate or spread from human to human. As such it is ideal to be used as a transporter, or "vector", to introduce other genes of interest into human cells.
By immunising with recombinant fowlpox virus, into which genes from different viruses and bacteria which do cause disease in humans have been inserted, human cells are infected and respond by forming an antigen (a molecule that stimulates an immune response). This process forms the basis for rational vaccine development.
Curry says that while previous studies have focused only on the immune response to the inserted antigen, there have not been any investigations into what effect the antigens generated by the fowlpox vector itself, have on the immune system.
"The fowlpox virus is made up of 260 genes," she said. "When that is introduced into a human cell it produces antigens from each of those genes, in addition to the inserted antigen. We are assessing if those resulting fowlpox antigens are responsible for generating an immune response of their own."
She says that by characterising the immune repsonse to the vector itself, the fowlpox virus may be able to be modified to enhance the immune response from the targeted antigen.
"By skewing the vector immune response to maximise the most favourable outcome, we can essentially use it to measure, as well as improve upon, the effectiveness of these vaccines," she said."Such a tool could be used in the development of vaccines for diseases as diverse as prostate cancer, HIV, and respiratory syncytial virus. The opportunities are limitless really."
Curry is based in the Experimental Therapeutics Laboratory (Hanson Institute, IMVS and Sansom Institute, UniSA) and is a recipient of the Cancer Council of SA PhD Scholarship, as well as being the first UniSA student to receive the Dawes Scholarship (awarded by the Royal Adelaide Hospital). Her studies are also supported by Australian Research Council and industry funding to her supervisors, Dr John Hayball (UniSA) and Dr Michael Brown (RAH).