Immunotherapeutics & Novel Therapies

Nutritional Immunology

The Nutritional Immunology Team investigates the role of dietary components and their interactions with other environmental factors and genes in age-associated changes of the immune and inflammatory responses. Nutritional immunity is a process by which a host organism sequesters trace minerals in an effort to limit pathogenicity during infection. Circulating concentrations of minerals, such as iron and zinc, decline rapidly and dramatically with the inflammation associated with infection. The potential to modulate the activity of the immune system by interventions with specific nutrients is termed immunonutrition. This concept may be applied to any situation in which an altered supply of nutrients is used to modify inflammatory or immune responses.