Kinetics of CD40 induced anti-leishmanial immune response

Abstract

CD40 is a transmembrane receptor for CD40-ligand (CD40L) which belongs to the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) family and expressed in B-cells, macrophages and dendritic cells. CD40 was found to be the first receptor to show single receptor duality wherein the same receptor triggers counteractive functions. It is proposed that CD40 acts as the trigger for an exponential rise in complexity in cellular response. However, none of the available reports looked into the dynamic role of CD40 in the context of the other changing factors i.e. different antigenic load, differential expression of different cytokine and different co-stimulatory or co-inhibitory molecules expression in vivo. Hence, here we aim to investigate the dynamic expression of CD40 in vivo. In this work, we would be using leishmania as an infection model in mice to study the induced effector functions considering the dynamic expression of CD40 in different lymphoid organs in conditions of constantly changing antigenic loads and cytokines. We believe that this study will provide a clear insight into the temporal dynamics of anti-leishmanial immune response and might help in devising potential therapeutics against Leishmania infection.

Keywords

• cd40
• leishmania infection
• tumour necrosis factor