Members of the Paust laboratory are interested in the development and testing of novel immunotherapies that elicit clinically relevant Natural Killer cell-mediated anti-pathogen or anti-tumor immunity. Our research program is centered on the discovery that subsets of NK cells are long-lived and capable of antigen-specific immunological memory to viruses and altered self, giving precedence to investigations that seek to exploit NK cell activity to prevent or cure disease. Currently, we are pursuing three specific scientific goals: 1) Identification of the mechanisms by which subsets of murine and human NK cells mediate antigen-specific immunological memory responses; 2) Identification of NK cell-specific immune correlates of protection from infection or malignancy; 3) Development of effective, host-protective vaccine or therapeutic approaches that elicit potent NK cell-mediated recall responses in vivo. To enable our studies, we routinely utilize mouse models, xenograft models, and clinical samples for the immunological analyses of innate and adaptive NK cell-mediated immune responses.
