Team - University of Siena

Objectives - to test the hypotheses whether immuno-senescence related to RSV infections is based on host or viral factors

Description of work
The cellular immune response to Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) decreases at old age. This could be due to immune-senescence or due to alterations of the virus. In order to test these possibilities, peptides that stimulate the cellular immune response to RSV in the elderly will be identified. Blood samples from people over 65 years of age and young people will be collected and PBMC separated. Serological tests will be performed to analyse the humoral response to RSV in the samples.
A preliminary screening of the HLA typing will be carried out and HLA-A(*) 02.01 (frequently present in the Caucasian population) positive subjects will be enrolled in this study. IFN production in addition to the CTL activity against RSV infected target cells will be tested.

We are going to study the phenotype of RSV-specific CD8+ T cells in human infections, by FACS analysis. Similar assays will be performed on the population affected by human Metapneumovirus infection in collaboration with partners 1 and 4. Our preliminary results will be transmitted to the other partner 8 (MK) who can follow the same procedure, since CTL epitopes for EBV have already been defined. The data collected will be transferred to partner 5 for software construction.

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