Kristin Berg Kringstad

Background

I have a bachelor's degree in molecular biology from the University of Bergen and I am currently working on my master project in the Brain Tumour Immunology and Therapy group at the Department of Biomedicine.

Project

Identification and characterization of T regulatory cell subsets sorted from peripheral blood of CMV+/- GBM patients and CMV+/- donors, and tumour infiltrating immune cells from CMV+/- GBM patients.

My master project focuses on Glioblastoma (GBM), the most common and malignant primary brain tumour in adults, and Cytomegalovirus (CMV), a Herpes-simplex virus. CMV is present in 80% of GBM patients who have CMV antibodies in their blood and 41% harbour CMV antigens in their tumour. CMV impacts both the tumour and immune cell compartments to promote malignant progression. Recent research conducted by this group suggests that CMV infection may induce immunosuppressive regulatory T cells that impact T cell repertoires in the tumour microenvironment and peripheral blood. My project aims to identify novel proteins present in CMV+ GBM patients and characterize the gene expression and phenotypic profiles of Treg cell fractions. Hopefully my findings will contribute to the future development of immunotherapy strategies.