DEVELOPMENT OF FERRET REAGENTS FOR USE IN THE CHARACTERIZATION OF IMMUNE RESPONSES TO RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS IN THE FERRET MODEL.

Investigators

Abstract

Ferrets represent excellent models of human respiratory viruses such as influenza A virus, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. The goal of this proposal is to generate antibodies for analyzing immune cells and cytokine responses during respiratory infections in ferrets. The main focuses are immune cell markers and cytokines produced by these cells during immune responses. The contractor plans to use standard hybridoma techniques to generated monoclonal antibodies will then undergo extensive immunological characterization using various methods to show the specificity to recombinant immunogens as well as selected ferret samples.