Myriam Pujol, PhD student of the CReSA, will carry out next week the lecture and defense of her research work entitled “Interaction of swine influenza virus with different dedtritic cells”, directed by Dr. Maria Montoya.

Development of new vaccine strategies against porcine infectious diseases is a very important field of research, particularly for the livestock industry. There is a real need in this area of research to generate new low-cost safe vaccines able to serologically differentiate vaccinated animals from infected ones.

Studies on dendritic cell (DCs) functions have shown that these cells play a key role in the development of an efficacious immune response and stress the importance of a proper DC-immunogen interaction that results in the right antigen processing and in the activation of DCs for a vaccine to be effective. Yet, current knowledge about DCs in relevant livestock species such as pigs is very limited.

The project, called “New vaccine and immunomodulatory strategies based on porcine dendritic cells stimulation using influenza virus infection model”, will seek to study the immunomodulatory role of porcine DCs and to use this knowledge for the rational development of new and improved vaccines.

The virus model of choice is the porcine influenza virus, a relevant respiratory disease in swine, which has not been fully considered in some circumstances in comparison with other porcine respiratory pathogens. Porcine influenza virus could infect humans and, more importantly, swine could act as an intermediate reservoir for avian influenza to colonize humans. The fact the porcine influenza is considered a zoonosis illustrates its global relevance and the need for efficient tools to control this disease. 

The research work is a part of this project and has been developed in the frame of the Master on Immunology, organized by the UAB and UB. The lecture and defence will be carried out attending this calendar:

16th September:

9 a 14 h  Aula 10, aulari Facultat de Biologia, UB

15 a 21h Aula de Graus, Facultat de Biologia, UB

17th September:

9 a 14 h Aula de Graus, Facultat de Biologia, UB

15 a 21 h Aula de Graus, Facultat de Biologia, UB