Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has grown to astronomical proportions. As a result the world is in desperate need of new treatments and an effective vaccine. In Nairobi, Kenya a group of commercial sex workers have been described, who, despite repeated exposure to HIV-1, remain uninfected. Globally, most HIV exposures occur in the female genital tract (FGT) by means of heterosexual contact thus it is reasonable to propose that the immune defences of the mucosal barrier in these women may be contributing in some way to their resistance to HIV infection. Furthermore, the FGT relies heavily on trafficking of immune cells to control infection, yet little is known about this mechanism. This highlights the role of the mucosal immune system in the FGT and its contribution to HIV resistance (HIV-R). I hypothesize that lymphocytes in the FGT of HIV resistant women have distinct functional and phenotypic differences compared to low-risk controls that may be playing a significant role in resistance to HIV infection. For my project, I will be studying the potential role the FGT has in mediating resistance to HIV infection as well as a comprehensive study of the mechanisms by which immunity is achieved at the mucosal level. In order to study these hypothesized differences I have adopted a new approach using mass spectrometry to identify the proteome of lymphocytes as well as detect differences in expression levels from the different study groups. Also, I will describe the responsiveness HIV-R women have to HIV by stimulating lymphocytes from the FGT with HIV proteins. Using the same proteomics approach I will then be able to detect and quantify the response these cells have to HIV. The overall goal of my project is to determine the potential role the FGT has in protection from HIV infection and to explore the possibility of furthering vaccine and microbicide design.