ERC Starting Grant · 2017
Understanding HIV-specific B cell function and viral immunogenicity
I will establish how abnormal B cell behaviour contributes to the generation of HIV neutralising antibodies by studying B cell biology: Previous studies show that broadly neutralising HIV antibodies are the most highly-mutated human antibodies ever isolated, with unusually long binding loops and polyreactivity, suggestive of changes to B cell tolerance and germinal centre selection mechanisms. These remarkable antibodies develop only during HIV infection, concurrent with immune dysfunction, not following vaccination. Crucially, the cellular processes whereby these antibodies arise need to be elucidated and I hypothesize that doing so using RNAseq, flow cytometry and imaging B cell…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.