2021-2022 Pilot Research Program Recipients
Dr. Kathryn Frietze,Ph.D., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
“Preclinical assessment of a vaccine against opioids: assessing the kinetics of the antibody response.” Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) and opioid overdose are major public health problems. Novel approaches for preventing opioid overdose and treating OUD are needed. Vaccines against opioids are a promising approach for eliciting protective antibodies that can bind and sequester opioids in the blood, preventing them from reaching their targets in the central nervous system. We have developed a opioid vaccine approach that utilizes a bacteriophage virus-like particle platform to display opioid drugs at high density to the immune system. In mice, these vaccines elicit high titer antibodies quickly and the antibodies are long-lasting. In this pilot project, we will assess the kinetics of the immune response to our opioid vaccines in non-human primates, providing critical feasibility data to support future efficacy studies in non-human primates and human vaccination studies.
Dr. Nagarjun Konduru,Ph.D., The University of Texas Health Science, Tyler, TX
“Discovery and development of exosomal biomarkers for biological monitoring of adverse pulmonary effects of inhaled toxicants.” The long-term health consequences of wildfire smoke exposures are unknown, particularly in pediatric populations as their lungs are still developing; The focus of this pilot proposal is to study exosomes, tiny vesicles released by most cells in the body that are involved in cell-to-cell communication, as a novel source for biomarkers to track the insidious respiratory effects from exposures in a colony of macaque monkeys that were exposed to wildfire smoke as infants. The study on this monkey cohort will further our knowledge about consequential late effects of childhood exposures to wildfire smoke, an issue that is dangerously rising.
Dr. Nadia Roan,Ph.D., UC San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
“Interrogating SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells using high-dimensional mass cytometry analysis.” T cells are an important component of the immune response during SARS-CoV-2, and include cells that can directly recognize and destroy virally-infected cells. Although the features and longevity of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells have been characterized, these studies have been limited to characterization of T cells from the blood while the vast majority of the body’s T cells reside in tissues. To better understand the functions of tissue T cells, including those residing in the lung where SARS-CoV-2 initially enters, we will characterize by mass cytometry SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells from tissues of intranasally infected rhesus macaques.