Sudeep Kumar
Albany Medical College, NY·Microbiology & Immunology
Vaccines mostly train the body to make antibodies, proteins that stick to germs outside of cells. But some threats hide inside cells, including viruses that replicate in our own cells and cancer cells with abnormal proteins.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
cross-presentation
CD8 T cells
FcgammaRI
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Test whether delivering protein antigens to human FcγRI, an antibody-tail receptor on macrophages and dendritic cells, promotes cross-presentation, using an antigen-binding fragment of an anti-hFcγRI antibody that avoids engaging other Fc receptors.
- Determine which dendritic cell subsets carry out cross-presentation of hFcγRI-targeted antigen in the respiratory mucosa after intranasal delivery of the model vaccine.
- Compare receptor-selective targeting with antibody-antigen immune complexes to isolate the contribution of the activating receptor hFcγRI to CD8 T-cell responses, using mice engineered to express hFcγRI on professional antigen-presenting cells.
More about the research
Those require killer T cells, specifically CD8 T cells, which inspect the inside of cells and destroy infected or abnormal ones. For a vaccine made of protein to trigger killer T cells, specialized immune cells must perform cross-presentation: taking up protein from outside and displaying pieces of it on the molecules that CD8 T cells read. Making cross-presentation work better is the central problem here.
Why it matters
Most protein subunit vaccines elicit antibodies but weak killer T-cell responses, which limits their use against cancer and viruses that live inside cells. Clarifying how targeting human FcγRI drives cross-presentation could guide next-generation nasal vaccines that generate CD8 T-cell immunity in the airway while limiting off-target immune activation and inflammation.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Susheela Tridandapani
Ohio State University, OH·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how stimulating NOD2, an intracellular bacterial-fragment sensor, reshapes monocytes and CLL nurse-like macrophages, including loss of the inhibitory phosphatase SHIP1 and receptor CD31 and gain of the activating Fc receptor FcγRI.
Geoffrey Hart
University of Minnesota, MN·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether human NK cells, immune cells that kill antibody-coated targets, clear blood-stage Plasmodium in vivo by transferring them with human anti-merozoite antibodies into immunodeficient mice.
Xiaoyang Hua
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
Define the immune mechanisms by which a virus infecting only the nose recruits antigen-presenting cells to the lungs and boosts innate and adaptive lung immunity, a process called nose-lung cross talk.
The school
Albany Medical College: 3 labs on PI Pages, $23M a year on research, 8 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.