Liang Qiao
Georgia State University, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Vaccines usually work by teaching the body to make antibodies, but for some viruses antibodies are the problem rather than the solution. For HIV, the virus's outer coat varies so much that antibodies rarely cover all strains, and past vaccines that stirred up certain helper immune cells may have made infection more likely.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
HIV vaccine
dengue virus
Zika virus
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2030
What they work on
- Build plasmids with ubiquitin-tagged HIV clade B Gag and Env minigenes encoding CTL epitopes, package them in bovine papillomavirus-like particles, and test after oral immunization of mice whether MHC class Ia-restricted killer T cells arise without HIV-specific CD4+ helper T cells.
- Construct UL40-tagged HIV Gag minigene vaccines delivered in papillomavirus-like particles to determine whether MHC-E-restricted killer T cells, linked to strong viral control in monkeys, are induced in mucosal and systemic tissues of orally immunized mice.
- Package IL-7, IL-15 and CD70, signals that expand memory T cell precursors, into papillomavirus-like particles as an oral adjuvant and test whether it produces strong, durable systemic and tissue-resident memory CTL responses.
- Create plasmids encoding gene-rearranged, ubiquitinated nonstructural protein 3 (NS3) from Zika and dengue serotypes 1-4, and compare them with unmodified NS3 for induction of long-lasting killer T cell responses in mice.
- Test whether the NS3-based pseudovirus vaccine, with papillomavirus-like particle adjuvant, lowers viral titers and prolongs survival after Zika and dengue 1-4 challenge in HLA-B*0702 transgenic AG129 mice without triggering antibody-dependent enhancement.
More about the research
For dengue and Zika, antibodies from one infection can actually help a later, related virus enter cells and cause worse disease. Both projects here take the same route around these traps: design vaccines that train killer T cells, the immune cells that destroy infected cells, while avoiding the antibody and helper-cell responses that backfire. Both use papillomavirus-like particles, hollow virus shells with no viral genome, as delivery vehicles.
Why it matters
Antiretroviral drugs control HIV but no preventive vaccine exists, and the global epidemic continues; a vaccine that raises killer T cells without the helper T cells implicated in vaccine-enhanced infection could offer a different path. For dengue and Zika, a vaccine built on a nonstructural protein rather than the viral envelope could avoid antibody-dependent enhancement, the effect blamed for severe disease and extra hospitalizations after an existing dengue vaccine, and may protect pregnancies from Zika-related fetal damage. Success would support preclinical testing of candidate vaccines.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
James B Mclachlan
Tulane University of Louisiana, LA·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how intradermal immunization with the detoxified enterotoxin adjuvant dmLT combined with bacterial outer membrane vesicles directs vaccine-specific T cells to mucosal tissues, tracked with MHC class I and II tetramers.
Justin Bailey
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether a dengue vaccine's serotype composition determines the balance, neutralizing potency, and durability of serotype-specific versus cross-reactive memory B cells and monoclonal antibodies, and whether those responses predict protection after controlled human challenge with serotype 2.
Vijayakumar Velu
Emory University, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test how soluble IL-15/IL-15Rα-Fc, an immune-boosting cytokine complex, and galunisertib, a TGF-β pathway blocker, alone or combined, change T cell and natural killer cell subsets during chronic SIV infection in antiretroviral-treated rhesus macaques.
The school
Georgia State University: 9 labs on PI Pages, $241M a year on research, 300 research doctorates a year.
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