Matthew Edmans

Matthew is a DPhil student in the swine influenza immunology group supervised by Dr Elma Tchillian in collaboration with Professor Paul Klenerman at the University of Oxford. His project falls within the One Health initiative as an interdisciplinary collaboration between human and veterinary immunology which aims to deliver information not only useful for development of a vaccine for swine influenza in pigs but for humans too.

Matthew’s project focuses on the characterisation of specific aspects of the immune response which are generated upon encountering swine influenza infection as well as vaccination.  Of particular interest are the novel T cell subset mucosal associated invariant T cells (MAITs), which exhibit both innate and adaptive like properties similar to Natural Killer T cells and gamma delta T cells.  MAITs have been identified in sheep and cattle, but there is no published data on pigs nor has the role of MAITs in swine influenza been defined.