Influenza virus is a major health burden, hospitalizing 200,000, and resulting in 36,000 deaths per year in the United States. Seasonal influenza infection is driven largely by antigenic shift to avoid established antibody responses. Thus, there is a need to create a broadly reactive T cell-based vaccine that recognizes highly conserved internal epitopes, thereby reducing the need for seasonal vaccination. However, the efficacy of cellular immunity to influenza viruses has been shown to wane over time. Lung tissue resident memory T cells (lung TRM) have been found to be important in a protective heterosubtypic response to influenza, and our preliminary data suggests that gradual decay of lung TRM cell numbers over time are responsible for the loss of cellular immunity to influenza viruses. This project will use a mouse model of influenza infection to examine the loss of subsets of influenza-specific lung CD8 TRM and how this decline is mediated by pro-apoptotic signaling triggered by localized inflammation. This will be accomplished using both respiratory and systemic pathogens to determine if the loss of TRM is specific to the lung or specific to respiratory pathogens. Secondary infections with unrelated pathogens or TLR agonists will be used to examine cell death pathways that drive loss of pre- existing flu-specific TRM. The overall goal of this project is to understand the mechanisms driving the loss of influenza-specific TRM from the lung environment. The knowledge gained in this study will guide future vaccine design against respiratory pathogens by understanding the mechanisms that lead to loss of lung TRM populations, and how localized inflammation affects pre-existing immunity in the lung.
Memory T cells in the lung have the potential to provide broad and highly protective cellular immunity to conserved epitopes found across multiple influenza strains, but this protective immunity gradually declines over time. This proposal will seek to understand the mechanisms that regulate the decay of lung-resident memory T cells. As a result, we will inform on how inflammation and aging will affect memory T cell responses to influenza thus informing future vaccination strategies.
