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Establishing a Human Tonsil Culture to Examine B Cell Polyclonal and Recall Responses and the Effect of HIV Infection

Balduf, Olivia (2026) MOBN03 20252
Degree Projects in Molecular Biology
Popular Abstract
A Tiny Immune System in a Dish: Studying HIV Outside the Body

Our immune system is composed of different cells and proteins that protect us from infections. Some cells are the front-line infantry of the army, and they attack as soon as they see any enemy enter the body. Some cells are like special forces, which are highly trained to fight one specific enemy. After seeing that enemy only once, they can lock into them and mount a highly specialized attack. These “special forces” are just like the adaptive arm of the immune system, and they have the unique ability to remember a specific pathogen. Understanding this adaptive immunity and immune memory can help scientists discover better ways to protect us against certain pathogens, such as... (More)
A Tiny Immune System in a Dish: Studying HIV Outside the Body

Our immune system is composed of different cells and proteins that protect us from infections. Some cells are the front-line infantry of the army, and they attack as soon as they see any enemy enter the body. Some cells are like special forces, which are highly trained to fight one specific enemy. After seeing that enemy only once, they can lock into them and mount a highly specialized attack. These “special forces” are just like the adaptive arm of the immune system, and they have the unique ability to remember a specific pathogen. Understanding this adaptive immunity and immune memory can help scientists discover better ways to protect us against certain pathogens, such as developing effective vaccines and treatments.

Since these immune cells usually circulate in our blood or reside in our tissues and bone marrow, how do scientists usually study them? While there are many ways to do this, one way is to take them out of the body and into the lab. Although this may sound strange, there are many effective ways we can both culture and analyze human cells outside the body. One way is to isolate immune cells from special tissues called lymphoid tissues, like your tonsils or lymph nodes, which are full of different immune cells that are interesting to study. We can then grow those cells in a dish and learn things about the immune system that can lead us to better treatments and vaccines for infections and diseases.

You might be thinking, but how does growing these cells help us understand the immune system better? There are many answers to this, but one thing we can learn about is how the immune system responds to infection or stimulation. To do this, we can add the cells to the dish, then we can also add microbes (like viruses or bacteria) or molecules that activate immune cells to analyse the resulting immune response.

How can we use this system to study HIV?
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the causative agent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which has affected tens of millions of people since before the 1980s. As the name implies, AIDS weakens the immune system, which leaves people with AIDS vulnerable to infections and other complications.

During my master’s project, I cultured tonsil cells and measured how the adaptive (the special forces!) immune cells responded to infection. We were interested in seeing if either the broad emergency response or targeted immune memory was changed in these cells after infection with HIV. Our results indicated that HIV-1 disrupted broad immune activation more than specific-memory-like responses. These results can help us understand how events during early infection leads to later immune dysfunction seen in people with HIV (PWH).

Master’s Degree Project in Molecular Biology 60 credits 2026
Department of Biology, Lund University

Advisor: Marianne Jansson
Advisors Department of Laboratory Medicine, Lund University (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Balduf, Olivia
supervisor
organization
course
MOBN03 20252
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
language
English
id
9233235
date added to LUP
2026-06-08 15:17:51
date last changed
2026-06-08 15:17:51
@misc{9233235,
  author       = {{Balduf, Olivia}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Establishing a Human Tonsil Culture to Examine B Cell Polyclonal and Recall Responses and the Effect of HIV Infection}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}