Human immune responses to microbial infections v2.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Human immune responses to microbial infections
IRAS ID
356566
Contact name
Matthias Eberl
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cardiff University
Duration of Study in the UK
10 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
The human immune system fights bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites by using specialised immune cells (e.g. T cells) and molecules, which recognise and attack agents that are perceived as ‘foreign’ or ‘dangerous’ for the body. At the same time, many pathogens have learned to hide from the constant surveillance by the immune system and escape from being attacked. Research at Cardiff University's Division of Infection & Immunity, namely by research groups led by Prof Matthias Eberl and Dr James McLaren, aims at defining the mechanisms the immune system uses to fight infection and the different strategies microbial pathogens have evolved to evade the immune system. This research also examines how these processes may lead to local inflammation and systemic responses including sepsis, and how to manipulate the underlying pathways for novel therapies, vaccines and diagnostics.
Our research will use samples provided by healthy volunteers to perform experiments in the laboratory that enables us to investigate how immune cells or immune molecules isolated from peripheral blood respond to experimental manipulation and extrapolate how such responses may occur in affected patients, both with localised infections at different anatomical locations and bloodstream infections. The samples will be used in experiments involving flow cytometry, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, fluorescence microscopy, polymerase chain reaction, RNA sequencing and more. These experiments may be performed on cryopreserved or freshly isolated immune cells or on freshly drawn serum or plasma. In some cases, the immune cells will be cultured for a period of time under sterile conditions to study how these cells respond to experimental stimuli or to expand them. We may also conduct experiments where we inject cells or molecules from the samples into animals to study how they function in a living organism in response to infection.
REC name
London - Camden & Kings Cross Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/PR/1080
Date of REC Opinion
26 Aug 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion