Rotation Projects

1. Aged mice have severely diminished numbers of naïve B cells and mount poor responses to "new antigens" despite the fact that B cell lymphogenesis continues for the life of the animal. We hypothesize this may be due to dysregulation of HP. We would like to determine if HP of immature B cells is impaired and/or if inhibition of HP by peripheral B cells is more active in aged mice. These studies require lymphocyte transfers between young and aged mice and the analysis of developmentally regulated antigens by flow cytometry.



2. To attempt to suppress innate immune responses by using adenovirus to transfer genes encoding dominant-negative regulators of critical signal pathways. These studies will use cells from hCAR mice as targets and in vitro assays for proliferation and cytokine secretion to determine the effect of gene transfers.