Episode 38: Using non-human primates to understand how to develop more effective TB vaccines

We talk with Dr. JoAnne Flynn, Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who uses non-human primate models of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) to determine who are the 'players' in the protective immune response for TB. 

We talk with Dr. James Crowe, Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Antibody Therapeutics and Professor of Pediatrics, Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who seeks to discover, manufacture and stockpile highly potent monoclonal antibodies ahead of the next epidemic.

We talk with Dr. Antonio DiGiandomenico, Senior Director and Head of Microbial Antibodies and Technologies within AstraZeneca’s early Infectious Disease unit, who uses new delivery modalities to enhance monoclonal antibody therapeutics for bacterial pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

We talk with Dr. Christopher Hunter, Professor and Director of the Institute for Infectious & Zoonotic Diseases in the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine in Philadelphia, PA, who studies the initiation of immunity by parasites and mRNA vaccines to inform new vaccine development.

We talk with Dr. Gagandeep Kang, Director of Enterics, Diagnotics, Genomics & Epidemiology at the Gates Foundation in Seattle, WA, who leads efforts to understand mechanisms of action to develop new and better vaccines for rotavirus, cholera, typhoid and shigella.

We talk with Dr. Rosemary Aogo, a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Institute of Health, MD, who uses mathematical and computational modeling of experimental, clinical and cohort data to inform next generation flavivirus vaccines and therapeutics.

We talk with Dr. Chris Risley, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL, who studies the regulation of local B cell responses in airway tissues and its role in protective immunity.

We talk with Dr. Mark Painter, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, PA, who studies the role of T cells following respiratory virus infection or vaccination as well as in immune memory, cancer, aging and autoimmunity.

We talk with Dr. Bernadeta Dadonaite, a research associate  at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, WA, who studies interactions between the influenza attachment protein hemagglutinin and its newly identified receptor protein, MHC-II.

We talk with Dr. Julianna Han, a senior staff scientist at the Scripps Research institute, CA, who studies antibody-epitope interactions following human influenza virus infection and vaccination to inform the development of novel influenza immunogens and antibody therapeutics.