Past undergraduate projects

Here is a summary of projects that final year students have undertaken in the lab.

2004-2005

Title: Characterisation of the Immune System in Mice with Varying Allelic Dosage of IGF2.
This project demonstrated that T cells from mice that overexpressed or lacked IGF2 proliferated at different levels, suggesting a possible contribution of IGF2 to maintaining T cell proliferation. This work contributed to an abstract that was presented and the British Society for Immunology Annual Congress.

2005-2006

Title: The kinetics of inflammation in experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis
The project was instrumental in establishing this useful technique in the laboratory, and it has now been adopted and used by several different investigators in the group.

2006-2007

Title: Role of complement in EAU
Complement is a critical regulator of innate immune responses. It also plays a role linking and amplifying adaptive immune responses through interactions with specific complement receptors. Using an antibody directed against the C5a fragment of complement, we found that inhibiting this pathway reduced histological evidence of infiltration in the autoimmune disease EAU. The results from this work were presented at the 11th European Meeting on Complement in Human Disease in September 2007.
This work contributed to the following publication
D. A. Copland, K. Hussain, S. Baalasubramanian, T. R. Hughes, B. P. Morgan, H. Xu, A. D. Dick and L. B. Nicholson (2010) Systemic and local anti-C5 therapy reduces the disease severity in experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis
Clin. Exp. Immunol. 159, 303-314.

2007-2008

Title: Analysis of 1B6 CD8+ T cells
Transgenic 1B6 T cells, made using a TCR that was originally class II restricted, are selected into the CD8 compartment on the FVB genetic background. We found that lthough similar to bona fide CD8 cells in the resting state, activation did not produce cells with a cytotoxic phenotype.

Title: The role of prostaglandins in T-cell-macrophage cross-talk
We found that PGD2 receptors are upregulated in response to inflammatory stimuli, and PGD2 is released. But unlike PGE2, this effector molecular does not inhibit T cell proliferation.

2008-2009

Title: Analysis of immune responses to novel autoantigens
This project characterised T cell responses to a panel of novel peptide antigens derived from retinal binding protein-3.

Title: Modulation of monocyte VEGF production in vitro
Certain stimuli induce VEGF from macrophages and this may be important in the healing response in different ocular diseases. This project characterised these responses in in vitro tissue culture.
This work contributed to the following publication
IL-10 regulation of macrophage VEGF production is dependent on macrophage polarisation and hypoxia (2010)
Wu WK, Llewellyn OP, Bates DO, Nicholson LB, Dick AD.
Immunobiology 215:796-803.

Title: Computer simulation of the immune response
Simulation of immune responses offers an alternative set of methodologies to investigate immune function. This project explored how useful such approaches might be in understanding infectious and autoimmune disease. The project received the Anna Mayr-Harting and Max Russ Prize for the most independent and imaginitive project of the year.

2009-2010

Title: Regulation of TNFα in vitro
This project characterised the expression of different mRNA binding proteins in response to innate inflammatory signals.

Title: Regulation of CD4 and CD8 T cell proliferation by macrophages
In this project we investigated whether the ability of macrophages to inhibit T cell proliferation depended on the phenotype of the T responding T cells.

Title: What is immunological memory?
This dry project surveyed concepts of immunological memory and related these to modern theories of their mechanism.

2010-2011

Title: Investigating the nature of macrophage produced thrombospondin-1
Thrombospondin-1 is produced by bone-marrow derived macrophages in response to a number of different stimuli. This project focused on the secreted form of the protein.

Title: Wnt signalling in autoimmune uveitis
Uveitis is one of the leading causes of blindness in the working age population. The involvement of wnt signalling in uveitis is currently unknown and this project focussed on investigating whether it played a role.
Maddy went on to join the lab to undertake a PhD.

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