Doctoral Themes - Proposals

NKVacc – NK cell memory-like response induction against liposome-encapsulated antigens

Supervisors

Pedro F. Pinheiro, pedro.pinheiro@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Gonçalo C. Justino, goncalo.justino@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Registration Institution

Instituto Superior Técnico (Universidade de Lisboa)

Project description

The immune system is a powerful player in protecting the host against several threats, including invading pathogens and growing tumour cells. Often, such pathogenic agents develop pathways to evade the immune response, and are able to thrive, causing disease. Triggering the immune system against specific targets with drugs or antibodies is one of the keystones of immune-based therapies nowadays. Vaccines are formulated using subunits of the invading pathogen to educate the host’s immune system. However, in several diseases, such as HIV, hepatitis B and malaria, such response can be hampered due to the poor immunogenicity of the pathogen or its constituents.

Some lymphocytes, namely natural killer (NK) cells, are able to develop very strong immune responses against virus-infected cells, by recognising stress molecules expressed on the surface of those target cells. The immune responses deployed ultimately result in recruiting other immune cells to act together against the infection, something that is currently being explored to fight cancer.

This work is aimed at developing a system by which poorly immunogenic pathogen peptides are encapsulated in artificial liposomes that are, in turn, decorated with a small molecule capable of triggering the activity of NK cells. This will involve the production of such peptides, their characterization, encapsulation and labelling of the encapsulated systems. These will then be tested in model immune systems, using human cells, and evaluated for their capacity to induce immunity and memory-like responses on NK and other immune cells.

Keywords

NK cells, vaccines, nanoparticles, encapsulation, immunity

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