Overview
Our research aims to understand how the integration of environmental signals, stressors, and intrinsic host conditions at the whole organism level impacts metabolic programs that influence immune system response. Additionally, we seek to explore how the metabolic reprogramming and responsiveness of immune cells can either enhance or hinder health at the organismal level.
The environmental stressors and conditions we study include aging, physiological stressors (such as exercise, infection, and vaccination), metabolic disease (obesity), and biopsychosocial processes. We examine host defense mechanisms of innate and adaptive immunity, in response to respiratory pathogens or vaccinations. Our goal is to better understand the influence of local or systemic metabolic environments on these immune responses. In addition to our basic science research, which seeks to uncover the underlying mechanisms of immunometabolism at both cellular and systemic levels, we also have applied goals of developing or improving existing vaccines and therapeutics.
Examples of ongoing projects:
Evaluate the effects of aging and obesity on the activation of dendritic cells stimulated by pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), focusing on metabolic, downstream signaling, and the subsequent impacts on T-cell priming and inflammation. Consider the consequences for host defense against pathogens and the development of inflammation-based chronic diseases.
Investigate how vaccine biomaterials and adjuvants influence dendritic cell metabolism and their effects on antibody production and T cell memory. This research aims to develop a nanoparticle-based vaccine to counteract age-related immune impairment and includes systems vaccinology approaches.
Determine the ways in which regular exercise promotes protective immunometabolic changes that enhance host defense while reducing inflammation and identify gene transcriptional changes accompanying these effects. By working backward from a “protective exercise phenotype,” we aim to identify pathways that confer protection, with the goal of developing therapeutics that target these pathways.
Explore how exercise, as a systems level metabolic stressor employed during immune activation (such as vaccination), shapes immune cell reprogramming and affects long-term immune memory.
Current Funding
Combination nanovaccine-based immunization against influenza the aged: immunity and protection.
The goal of this proposal is to identify the effect of vaccine biomaterials and adjuvants on dendritic cell metabolism, and subsequent effects on antibody and T cell memory to develop a nanovaccine to overcome age-related immune impairments.
NIH R01 AI154458-01
Adjuvant effect of physical exercise on immune response to COVID-19 vaccination and interactions with stress.
The goals of this project are to determine how exercise applied at the time of initial immunization to SARS-CoV-2 virus impacts immune response, establish the effect of psychological stress on immunogenicity to vaccination, and identify potential operative mechanisms
NIH R21 AI169330-02
Applying gene transcription findings from a protective phenotype in drug discovery against influenza virus.
Using gene expression findings from lung of exercise-training induced protection against influenza, potential novel antiviral proteins are evaluated for ability to restrict viral replication in A549 lung epithelial cells and mouse influenza infection models.
NIH R21 AI169330-02
