The hamster is a well-established model for several infectious diseases including influenza and SARS-CoV-2. Lack of hamster reagents has hampered pre-clinical studies of viral pathogenesis, host immunity, and vaccine development. The objectives of this proposal are to produce and test monoclonal antibodies against 10 cytokines and chemokines and 4 T cell surface markers for characterizing cytokine responses and examining T cells activation in the hamster models of respiratory infections. Completion of this project will provide high-affinity monoclonal antibodies that allow investigators to distinguish innate and adaptive inflammatory cytokine and chemokine responses as well as activated T cells, memory T cells, tissue resident memory T cells, and regulatory T cells in the hamster models of infectious diseases.
