This proposal is intended to address the educational activity of this Cooperative Center for TranslationResearch on Human Immunology and Biodefense, entitled; 'Cellular Immunity to Category A-C Viruses inHumans'. In order to accomplish the goal of training new investigators in human immunology it will benecessary to train graduate/post-graduate students, technical professionals and junior faculty in the nextgeneration of functional assays of real time cellular immune responses. We expect this training will be usedfor a broad range of basic viral immunology and translational research projects.The specific educational goals are to develop hands-on 1 to 2-week tutorials in T cell researchmethodologies. The overall initial aim is to recruit highly motivated and experienced graduate and postgraduateresearchers in need of advanced training in new technologies to be applied to their research inhuman and viral immunology. By targeting young investigators we expect broad application of newapproaches to be applied early in the research on Category A-C agents which will lead to more rapidadvancements in understanding the pathogenesis and early detection in patients with these infectiousdiseases. Examples include new FACS techniques, hereafter referred to as tetramer-binding analyses,using soluble multimers of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and peptide to directly stain antigenspecificT cells. The proposed educational training will focus on hands-on experimentation and will educatenew laboratories and lead to more rapid insights into the roles of virus-specific T cells in emerging viralthreats. In addition, we believe these tutorial educational approaches will facilitate the development ofstandardized approaches to measuring CMI allowing comparisons to be made across laboratories.Ultimately this will improve both the ability to assess this critical arm of the immune response following viralinfection or vaccination, as well as enable standardization of assays to allow for future comparison of resultsacross study populations.
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