May 2010: Biology whizz wins top prize for T cell research 
From left Greg Hung, Joyce Ho, Jae-Kyung Hyun and Dr Anindito Sen
University of Auckland biology student Joyce Ho has wowed a judging panel of top international scientists with her research into the activation of human T cells.
Joyce, a third year PhD student at the School of Biological Sciences, won the prize for “Best overall research poster” at the Maurice Wilkins Centre’s poster competition on 22 April. She will receive $5,000 to spend on travel to either a science conference or to an international laboratory to learn new skills or techniques.
Joyce’s winning poster looks at the effects of cytokines called IL-12 and IL-21 on the activation of CD8+ T cells – a type of white blood cells that provide essential protection against viral infections and cancer. She and Dr Anna Brooks discovered that these cytokines promote the functions of “memory” CD8+ T cells.
Joyce explains the importance of these memory cells: “Each T cell recognises a certain shape, such as a type of flu virus. When these T cells are activated, they form a large number of cells to fight against the virus. Once the flu virus has died off, some of these T cells will stay in the body as memory cells. Next time you get that same flu virus, the memory cells will remember the virus and they will kill it much quicker.”
To carry out her research, Joyce helped to develop a new model for growing and activating T cells in the laboratory under the supervision of Maurice Wilkins Centre Director Associate Professor Rod Dunbar. Using this model, the team can now grow T cells to a memory stage. These memory T cells could one day be used to design effective vaccines and immunotherapy.
“My role is to work out how to make white blood cells function better, that is, to kill invaders such as viruses more effectively,” says Joyce.
Joyce says the competition was a great opportunity to present her work to top international scientists and listen to their feedback.
Jae-Kyung Hyun, a PhD student in Associate Professor Alok Mitra’s laboratory at the School of Biological Sciences, won a $1000 cash prize for “Best student poster”. Jae is studying the structure of capsid proteins found in retroviruses – a family of pathogenic viruses that can cause deadly diseases such as HIV-1. He is using the Rous sarcoma virus – a tumour-causing retrovirus in birds – as a model organism.
Maurice Wilkins Centre Research Manager Rochelle Ramsay says the competition was a great chance to showcase the research of Maurice Wilkins Centre investigators and their graduate students.
“The judges, who were in New Zealand for the centre’s Science Advisory Board meeting, were very impressed by the high standard of the posters. They found it hard to pick a winner.”
Highly commended awards went to Greg Hung, a PhD student in Professor Margaret Brimble’s laboratory at the Department of Chemistry, and to Dr Anindito Sen, a post-doctoral fellow in Associate Professor Alok Mitra’s laboratory.
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