Professor Kingston Mills
Professor of Experimental Immunology and Director, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute
- Research Institute:
Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute
- Contact e-mail:
- Contact number:
- Thematic Area:
Diagnostic / Screening Assays, Translational Immunology Studies and Therapeutics/ Vaccine Studies
Research Profile:
Research in the Mill’s lab is focused on understanding the role of T cells in protective immunity against infection and how dysregulated T cells can cause autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. This work helps to inform the design of infectious disease and cancer vaccines and immunotherapeutics for autoimmune diseases.
COVID-19 Project: SARS-CoV-2 vaccines that induce immunological memory in the respiratory tract and models for assessing anti-inflammatory therapeutics for COVID-19
Immunity to coronaviruses appears to wane after infection or immunization with candidate vaccines. Furthermore, most of these SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in clinical trials are given by parenteral routes and this is less likely to induce local immunity, including neutralizing antibodies and tissue-resident memory T (TRM) cells, at the site of infection in the respiratory tract. While current vaccines may prevent COVID-19 disease, they may not prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection. This project focuses on developing vaccine strategies that promote migration of TRM cells and memory B cells to the lungs and nasal cavity. The ultimate aim of this research is to design second generation vaccines that induce long-term sterilizing immunity against respiratory infection as well as COVID-19 disease, thereby preventing transmission of the virus, which would allow development of herd immunity. Murine models of lung and systemic inflammation and cytokine storms are also being developed, which will be used to assess the effects of novel anti-inflammatory immunotherapeutics.
