Donor-Unrestricted T Cells Community
Human T cells play a central role in the human response to tuberculosis and in efforts to develop better vaccines. For decades, it was thought that T cells only that recognize antigens in the context of a diverse array of presentation molecules such that an epitope could be considered private, or restricted to each patient or human donor. Therefore, broad detection or alteration of T cell responses to one kind of antigen in all humans was viewed as technologically impossible. Over the past decade “Donor Unrestricted T cells” (DURT) that recognize their antigens through highly conserved molecules that are present among all humans have been discovered. The CTVD DURT research community seeks to harness these donor unrestricted T cell responses to MR1, CD1 and HLA-E proteins for improved vaccines against TB.
The DURT research community is comprised of individuals from different Institutions worldwide and includes the following members:
| Dave | Lewinsohn | Co-chair |
| Branch | Moody | Co-chair |
| John | Altman | Member |
| Sam | Behar | Member |
| Yueh-hsiu | Chien | Member |
| Dan | Hoft | Member |
| Tom | Ottenhoff | Member |
| Louis | Picker | Member |
| Ann | Rawkins | Member |
| Tom | Scriba | Member |
| Chetan | Seshadri | Member |
| Sally | Sharpe | Member |
| Emmanuel | Treiner | Member |