Dr
Christine
Jansen
I am a veterinary immunologist. My research focuses on understanding the interaction between pathogens and the innate (early) immune system in veterinary species such as chickens and pigs. On one hand we investigate how pathogens influence the innate immune system and on the other hand how the innate immune system can be modulated to enhance immune mediated protection.
One of my favorite subjects is the natural killer (NK) cell, an important player of the innate immune system. NK cells play a crucial role in the early defense against viral infections by direct killing of infected cells. In addition, NK cells are important for the induction of subsequent adaptive immune responses. In contrast to mammalian NK cells, knowledge on non-mammalian NK cells is limited. This is mainly due to the lack of NK-cell specific reagents. In the past years I characterized new markers for chicken NK cells and developed functional assays which we use to study the NK-cell response upon viral infection in chickens.
The NK-cell research is divided in several subprojects.
(1) Study basic NK-cell biology in the chicken
(2) Characterize the function of NK cells during viral infections.
(3) Investigate the effect of feed intervention strategies and changes in microbiome on the function of intestinal NK cells.
(4) NK cell targeting in vitro and in vivo to increase their activity and study their contribution to immune mediated resistance.