Our long-term interest lies in elucidating the mechanisms that govern CD8 T cell responses after infection and/or immunization. We are interested in exploring the pathways that are involved in Ag-specific CD8 T cell homeostasis in vivo and exploring how the manipulation of these pathways can be used to facilitate the generation and maintenance of productive memory CD8 T cell responses in health and disease.

We also study sepsis, a devastating & poorly controlled systemic infection, to define a sepsis-induced state of immunoparalysis and develop treatments to restore immunity in sepsis survivors.

Our main (and everchanging) research goals are to:

• Determine the factors that influence generation, maintenance and function of memory CD8 T cells
• Characterize CD8 T cells responding to multiple rounds of antigenic stimulations
• Establish relevant experimental models to study antigen-experienced CD8 T cells in vivo;
• Investigate the alterations in T cell-mediated immunity that occur after sepsis
• Define sepsis-induced state of immunoparalysis and explore treatments to restore immunity in sepsis survivors.