Institute: Northumbria University
Biography
The continual thread running through my research career has been a desire to better understand T cell biology through its measurement in a range of contexts, including vaccination and infection. I have worked in labs where we have used controlled infection models. In Trinity College Dublin we infected mice with Bordetella pertussis and measured associated immunity. In the Jenner Insitiute / Centre for Clinical Vaccinology & Tropical Medicine, we infected volunteers with malaria parasites via mosquito bites. These individuals were either vaccinated previously with candidate malaria vaccines or were non-vaccinated controls. T cell and antibody responses were extensively characterised in these people, as evidenced in several publications. We also looked for T cell responses in individuals in Kenya, naturally infected with malaria in the field. ELIspot and intracellular cytokine staining have been main methods of T cell analysis, but we have recently developed flow cytometry methods involving T cell surface activation markers with and without in-vitro antigenic challenge. We have more recently applied this approach to natural infection, or sensitization, of individuals with lung conditions: Bronchiectasis, COPD, Cystic fibrosis, and hypersensitivity pneumonitis. The main infections here were Pseudomonas, Haemophilus, Burkholderia, Rhinovirus, CMV and RSV. I have also extensively measured antibody responses in these contexts.
Key Publications
A list of publications can be found here.
Web Links of Interest
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/t/professor-stephen-todryk/