Objective
In addition to polyreactive “natural antibodies” that act as the first line of defense against invading pathogens, “humoral memory” is composed of high affinity antibodies that mediate long-lived immunity against infectious agents, e.g. providing protection against re-infection. The molecular dissection of anti-pathogen B-cell responses using modern technologies to generate specific monoclonal antibodies allowed breakthrough discoveries on antiviral responses to Influenza and HIV. The goal of this proposal is to study memory B-cell antibody responses to human pathogens, especially viruses, by generating and characterizing envelope specific antibodies from infected patients. I propose three aims to address what I believe to be some of the most exciting questions in the field of antiviral B-cell immunity. I propose to study: (i) the development and dynamics of memory B-cell responses to HIV; (ii) the mucosal antibody response to HIV; (iii) the memory B-cell response to Chikungunya virus. The antibodies that will be produced may be of therapeutic interest, but more importantly, their characterization will lead to a better understanding of human antibody responses to infectious agents, and may uncover candidate immunogens for vaccine development.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologyvirology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusesinfluenza
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusesHIV
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsvaccines
Call for proposal
ERC-2013-StG
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
ERC-SG - ERC Starting GrantHost institution
75724 Paris
France