Amongst his many other activities, Louis-Marie also delivered several lectures and seminars on Molecular approaches to HLA typing: past, present and future.
Prof Reyes-Sandoval has developed a novel candidate dengue virus vaccine, designed to elicit a T-cell response to conserved dengue proteins. Given the critical role that HLA plays in the processing and presentation of antigenic substances to T-cells for immune recognition, it is very important that the HLA types of the study participants be determined. The knowledge of the recipients HLA alleles and the peptides they restrict will be invaluable in the characterisation of T-cell responses elicited by natural dengue infection and/or following immunisation with this candidate vaccine. It is therefore very important that a HLA typing facility be set up in Mexico to help with present and future projects.
Louis-Marie visited and trained staff and students from the following institutes: Universidad Michoacana San Nicolás de Hidalgo and Laboratorio Estatal de Salud Pública in Michoacán; Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias Microbiológicas, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla; Centro de Detección Biomolecular and Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, ITESM Campus Cd de México.