Wynette Dietz

E-mail: willx016@umn.edu

Thesis Advisor: Chris Pennell

Year entered: 2005

Degrees received:
B.A., Biology, Hamline University, 2004

Honors and Awards:

• 3M Fellowship 2005-present

Thesis research:
Heat shock protein 70 (hsp70) is a stress protein that functions intracellularly as a chaperone and extracellularly as an immune adjuvant. It elicits immune responses by both delivering antigens (its client proteins) to antigen presenting cells (APCs) and inducing APCs to express proinflammatory cytokines and costimulatory molecules. The net result is a protective CD8+ T cell response in animal models of viral and tumor immunity.

Our long-term goal is to exploit hsp70 in cancer vaccines. Our goals in this study are twofold: 1) to examine the ability of a DNA-based vaccine encoding hsp70 and a control antigen to activate antigen-specific CD8+ T cells, and 2) to determine the efficacy of administering the vaccine intradermally via tattooing.