2017 Participants
Gaby Barran
Chronic transplant rejection remains a leading cause of organ transplant failure. In such cases, immune cells from the transplant recipient attack the donor tissue; recognising it as foreign and eventually causing the donor organ to fail. The project I was involved in aims to understand the role of cross -reactive T cells within the clinical setting of organ rejection, hopefully providing new blood monitoring tools for the prognosis and prevention of transplant rejection in the future.
My specific role within the project focused on functionally testing a cross -reactive model to confirm a virus -specific T cell receptor (TCR) isolated from a patient sample recognised the allogenic (capable of eliciting an immune response) HLA (human leukocyte antigen) molecule from the donor tissue. I developed skills using many molecular and cellular techniques to study the TCR in question while also gaining significant understanding of analysis used in research acquired by flow cytometry.
Funding source: Newcastle University (Undertaken at University of Monash, Australia)
Supervisor: Dr Nicole Mifsud