Non-invasive therapeutic cell tracking to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccine strategies for emerging viruses

In order to quickly minimize disease spread and develop therapies when a novel virus emerges, it is important to understand how the virus infects humans and how our body's immune system responds to the virus. This was lacking during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada and globally. During infection, a specialized type of immune cell known as a dendritic cell is able to sense a virus infection and initiate a cascade of events that lead to a robust immune response to that virus. Despite its important role during virus infection, few studies have been performed to investigate its role during infection with the virus that causes COVID-19. Additionally, dendritic cells can be formulated into a vaccine against many types of viruses and this type of vaccine has already proven very safe and effective in the cancer setting. Where these dendritic cells migrate to within the body and how many migrate to this location is predictive of how strong the body's immune response is to this virus infection. Therefore, if we use non-invasive medical imaging to track these dendritic cells as they move through the body, we can determine if the body is responding well to treatment. This research project aims to study the important role that dendritic cells play during infection with the viruses that cause COVID-19 and mpox infections and will also aim to investigate ways to track their movement through the body using non-invasive medical imaging. Finally, a dendritic cell-based vaccine will be developed to the viruses that cause COVID-19 and mpox infections and non-invasive medical imaging will be employed to assess its effectiveness. Dendritic cell-based vaccines can be a very powerful therapeutic strategy and it is important to note that they can be applied to many different kinds of emerging and re-emerging viruses that can infect the human population.