Innate Immunity and HIV-1

Our research is principally focussed on the study of Natural killer cells with a view to developing strategies which promote NK cell functions in HIV-1 infected individuals and which take advantage of the potential of NK cells to enhance antigen specific T cell responses in prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine adjuvants.

Our work to date has established that concomitant infections including herpesviruses and HIV-1 viral RNA as dominant factors in driving chronic activation and differentiation and function of NK cells during HIV-1 infection. Suppression of HIV-1 viral load using anti-retroviral therapy only partially reverses loss of NK cell function and phenotypic differentiation. In addition active HIV-1 viraemia is associated with a loss of NK cells in the gastrointestinal tract and a shift in their functional phenotype.

Current Projects investigate:

1. the impact of HIV-1 on NK cell differentiation and activation in response to toll like receptor ligands and 2. the role of NK cells, -TCR+ T cells and B cells in promoting HIV-1 antigen-specific T cell responses, both of which have application to the selection of adjuvants for HIV-1 vaccines. Separate studies are being performed on innate immune function in the healthy and HIV-1 infected human gastrointestinal tract and on the functional impact of co-crosslinking multiple receptors on NK cells from HIV-1 infected individuals.