Weaponising NK cells to treat viral infections

Natural Killer (NK) cells are innate immune cells which play an important role in eliminating malignant and virally infected cells. Emerging evidence indicates they can also possess memory-like functions, analogous to T cells.

NK cells are highly diverse and certain sub-populations exhibit an enhanced ability to mediate cellular cytotoxicity of target cells, including HIV-infected cells. This suggests certain populations of NK cells may be useful effector cells to eliminate virally-infected cells from the body in chronic infections such as HIV.

We are developing immunotherapy-based strategies to target residual HIV-infected cells that persist in the body despite anti-HIV therapy as part of an approach to cure HIV. The objectives of this project include identifying the relevant NK subset which is the most potent killer of HIV-infected cells and developing anti-HIV antibodies with enhanced function which can help mediate antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity by NK cells. 

Discoveries made in this project may be applicable not only to HIV cure approaches, but also more broadly to immunotherapies to target a range of chronic viral infections and cancer.

This project involves laboratory techniques including cell culture with primary human cells, immunophenotyping/ flow cytometry, HIV infection (under PC3 conditions), and biostatistical analysis.