Donna Murasko

Although my initial training was in tumor immunology, the focus of my research for more than 20 years has been the changes in immune response with increasing age. Utilizing both mouse models and human samples, we have focused on the immune response to viruses: control of primary virus infections in mice and protection from influenza disease after vaccination of humans. Due to the importance of CD8 T cell response in virus infections, most of our work includes CD8 T cells. We consistently demonstrate both an age-associated decrease and delay in response to virus using three different viruses, two strains of mice and humans. While previous studies focused on intrinsic changes in the CD8 T cells, more recently the role of extrinsic factors (eg. dendritic cells, Treg, cytokine production) are being explored.