Henao Tamayo Lab – Faculty Research – College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Henao Tamayo Lab

Our laboratory is devoted to investigate the pathogenesis and immune response to mycobacterial species, specially M. tuberculosis, with a central interest in the adaptive immune response induced by vaccines. In our laboratory we have the ability to test how effective this immune response is against different clinical strains of tuberculosis. Our goal is to achieve a better understanding of the immune response to different vaccine candidates using a multiparametric, unbiased analysis of the cells induced after vaccination. We also utilize metabolic profiles and single cell sequencing as a readout of the type of cellular immune response induced after vaccination.

Furthermore, as the Director of the CSU Flow Cytometry Core facility and due to our labs 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 have the capacity to identify rare populations, but also to match cell populations across samples, and statistically compare features between different populations. These algorithms provide an unsupervised analysis, allowing an unbiased investigation of cytometry data. In addition to flow cytometry, we are currently implementing single cell sequencing, as well as, metabolomic analysis of immune cells elicited in response to mycobacterial infections and vaccination

research project

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

The Henao Tamayo lab, in collaboration with the Podell lab, is leading a CSU research team on a $1.2 million subcontract from the Infectious Disease Research Center (IDRI) in Seattle. The subcontract is part of one of three centers, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to accelerate immunology research progress in tuberculosis vaccine development. The overall objective is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the immune responses required to prevent initial infection, the establishment of latent infection, and the transition to active TB disease. Additionally, CSU will conduct experiments to study the interference of environmental mycobacteria, which live in water and soil, with the protection that the BCG vaccine provides against TB. There is currently only one vaccine for TB, and it only reliably works on children; however, the ability of this vaccine to protect adults is highly variable.

research project

Vaccine induced memory immunity in tuberculosis

There are several vaccine candidates in development that give protection against the laboratory strains H37Rv and Erdman at a level comparable to the BCG vaccine. However, whether [a] different vaccine types give equivalent or different levels of memory T cell subsets is unknown, and [b] whether these vaccines will be equally protective against newly emerging highly virulent clinical strains is equally unaddressed. The purpose of this study is to begin to answer these questions. The lab determines if memory immunity induced by each vaccine is equally effective against four clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis which are all highly virulent but which differ in terms of their fitness [inhibition by BCG] and in their ability to induce unbeneficial regulatory T cell responses.

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