Pertussis is a respiratory disease caused by bacteria that grow only on the ciliated epithelium of the respiratory tract. We are currently studying the cells involved in protective mucosal immunity in the respiratory tract in a mouse model of respiratory infection. Following respiratory infection with B. pertussis, antigen-specific T lymphocytes can be recovered from the lymph nodes draining the lung. These T lymphocytes proliferate in a dose dependent fashion to B. pertussis filamentous hemagglutinin, and are a mixed population of CD4+ and CD8+ cells. We are currently attempting to establish T cell lines with the eventual goal of cloning these cells. Established mouse T cell clones to pertussis antigens, derived from the lungs of infected mice, will allow us to study in a detailed fashion, the role of T cells in protective respiratory immunity to B. pertussis infection.
