Rational approaches to immune regulation

Our laboratory is interested in the properties of proteins that render them immunogenic, and how such immunogenicity may be modulated in vivo. We are attempting to enhance the immune response in the design of more effective vaccines against viral diseases, such as HIV, and against tumor antigens expressed on breast, ovarian, and cervical cancer and B cell lymphomas. Our main approach is to use a facultative intracellular bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, which has the unusual ability to live and grow in the cytoplasm of the cell and is thus an excellent vector for targeting passenger antigens to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I pathway of antigen processing with the generation of authentic cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) epitopes. In the field of tumor immunotherapy, we are also developing nonliving vaccine vectors for tumor antigens.