Respiratory Immune Response of Young Foals

Newborn foals are faced with a number of challenges after birth including an onslaught of infectious and opportunistic pathogens. Maternal antibodies play an important role in providing protection until the foal's own immune system is able to deal with these challenges. Relatively little is known about the process whereby the immune system of the foal matures. What is known is that young foals exhibit unique susceptibilties to respiratory infections not normally encountered in the adult. The goal of this project is to characterize the immune response of foals from birth onwards with particular emphasis on the lung environment. The effect of a virus infection on the development of the lung immune response will also be determined.