Adler Lab - Research
Cytomegaloviruses are attractive vectors for expressing foreign antigens in their hosts and eliciting strong and long lasting T cell responses. Two features make them exceptional: (i) Viral inhibitors of CD8 T cell responses allow superinfection with the same vector and thus repeated vaccinations and (ii) Modulation of the viral equipment of immune modulatory genes enables the construction of vectors eliciting highly diverse patterns of immune responses. Our current focus are vectors expressing and lacking viral chemokines and the analysis of their potential as vaccine vectors.
Figure: Strategy to introduce a foreign antigen into a BAC-cloned virus vector.