Henao Tamayo Lab

Our laboratory is devoted to investigating the pathogenesis and immune response to mycobacterial species, especially M. tuberculosis, with the main interest in the immune responses induced by vaccines. More recently, our knowledge and expertise evaluating the cellular and molecular immune responses to Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) and additional anti-TB vaccine candidates, is being applied to evaluate novel vaccine candidates and therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2 (causative agent of COVID-19).

In our laboratory, we have the ability to test how effective the immune response is against different clinical strains of bacterial and viral infections. Our goal is to better understand the immune response to different vaccine candidates using multiparametric and transcriptional unbiased analysis of the cells induced after vaccination. We also utilize metabolic profiles, high throughput and histologic methods, and computational tools to evaluate immune responses.

Furthermore, as the director of the CSU Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting facility and due to our lab experience using flow cytometry as an analytical tool, our laboratory has been implementing and developing new tools for multicolor flow cytometry analysis. We are currently using algorithms that automatically identify cell populations according to their marker expression profiles. These computational methods not only can identify rare populations, but also to match cell populations across samples, and statistically compare features between different populations. The algorithms we recently published in Scientific Reports (Cyto-Feature Engineering: A Pipeline for Flow Cytometry Analysis to Uncover Immune Populations and Associations with Disease) provides an unsupervised analysis, allowing an unbiased investigation of cytometry data.

research project

Immune Mechanisms of Protection Against Mycobacterium tuberculosis Center (IMPAC-TB)

The Henao Tamayo and Podell labs are leading a CSU team on a $1.2 million subcontract to accelerate research progress in tuberculosis vaccines. Objectives are to understand the immune responses that prevents initial infection, the establishment of latent infection, and the transition to active TB disease. There is currently only one vaccine for TB and it only reliably works on children.

research project

Vaccine induced memory immunity in tuberculosis

There are several vaccine candidates that give protection against the laboratory strains H37Rv and Erdman at a level comparable to the BCG vaccine. However, whether different vaccine types give equivalent or different levels of memory T cell subsets is unknown, and whether these vaccines will be equally protective against newly emerging highly virulent clinical strains is equally unaddressed.

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Publications

A self-amplifying mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate induces safe and robust protective immunity in preclinical models.
Maruggi G, Mallett CP, Westerbeck JW, Chen T, Lofano G, Friedrich K, Qu L, Sun JT, McAuliffe J, Kanitkar A, Arrildt KT, Wang KF, McBee I, McCoy D, Terry R, Rowles A, Abrahim MA, Ringenberg MA, Gains MJ, Spickler C, Xie X, Zou J, Shi PY, Dutt T, Henao-Tamayo M, Ragan I, Bowen RA, Johnson R, Nuti S, Luisi K, Ulmer JB, Steff AM, Jalah R, Bertholet S, Stokes AH, Yu D.Mol Ther. 2022 May 4;30(5):1897-1912. doi: 10.1016/j.ymthe.2022.01.001. Epub 2022 Jan 3.PMID: 34990810

A longitudinal SARS-CoV-2 biorepository for COVID-19 survivors with and without post-acute sequelae.
LaVergne SM, Stromberg S, Baxter BA, Webb TL, Dutt TS, Berry K, Tipton M, Haberman J, Massey BR, McFann K, Alnachoukati O, Zier L, Heacock T, Ebel GD, Henao-Tamayo M, Dunn J, Ryan EP.BMC Infect Dis. 2021 Jul 13;21(1):677. doi: 10.1186/s12879-021-06359-2.PMID: 34256735

The Memory Immune Response to Tuberculosis.
Kirman JR, Henao-Tamayo MI, Agger EM.Microbiol Spectr. 2016 Dec;4(6). doi: 10.1128/microbiolspec.TBTB2-0009-2016.PMID: 28087940

Antigen Presentation of mRNA-Based and Virus-Vectored SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines.
Rijkers GT, Weterings N, Obregon-Henao A, Lepolder M, Dutt TS, van Overveld FJ, Henao-Tamayo M.Vaccines (Basel). 2021 Aug 3;9(8):848. doi: 10.3390/vaccines9080848.PMID: 34451973

Acquisition of High-Quality Spectral Flow Cytometry Data.
Fox A, Dutt TS, Karger B, Obregón-Henao A, Anderson GB, Henao-Tamayo M.Curr Protoc Cytom. 2020 Jun;93(1):e74. doi: 10.1002/cpcy.74.PMID: 32421215

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People

Marcela Henao Tamayo, M.D., Ph.D.

Lab Principal Investigator (PI)
Monfort Professor
Director, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, CU Medical School - Fort Collins Branch
Director, CSU Flow Cytometry Facility
Co-Director, Mycobacteria Research Laboratories

Taru Dutt, Ph.D.

Research Scientist I

Bradly Burke, Ph.D.

Research Scientist I

Faye Lanni, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow

Lizzy Creissen

Research Associate III
CSU Flow Cytometry Core Manager

Amanda Hitpas, M.S.

Research Associate II
Lab Manager

Sasipha Hokeness

Research Associate I

Kristina Tran

Research Associate I

Brennen Troyer

Research Associate I

Heidi Kloser

Graduate Research Assistant

Pablo Maldonaldo Jr

Graduate Researcher

Elizabeth Dorst

Student Researcher

Jessica Glycenfer

Student Researcher

Makayla Morris

Student Researcher

Sage Phuepwint

Student Researcher

Rylee Weniger

Student Researcher

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