Straus Lecturer Will Discuss T-Cell Response to Herpesviruses
Dr. David Koelle will deliver the 2016 NIAID Stephen E. Straus Memorial Lecture on Infectious Diseases. Koelle’s lecture, titled “The T-Cell Response to HSV and VZV: Discovery through Clinical Trials,” will be held on Friday, Apr. 8 at 2 p.m. in the Bldg. 50 1st floor conference room 1227/1233. The lecture series honors Straus, who served NIAID for 30 years as a senior investigator and lab chief and died in 2007.
Koelle is a professor in the division of allergy and infectious diseases at the University of Washington and has ancillary appointments in the departments of laboratory medicine and global health and affiliations with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute and Benaroya Research Institute. Throughout his 25-year career, he has worked with alphaherpesviruses, a family of viruses that includes herpes simplex virus (HSV)-1, HSV-2 and varicella zoster virus (VZV).
His lecture will address his lab’s research to discover and prioritize antigens important for inducing immune responses to viruses such as HSV and VZV. While effective vaccines exist for VZV, they have been elusive for HSV. Koelle’s lab has undertaken detailed studies of the CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses to HSV-1 and HSV-2, uncovering an unexpected level of cross-reactivity with VZV. This work has helped to identify possible target antigens for HSV vaccines and has contributed to the development of HSV vaccine candidates that have reached pre-clinical and clinical stages.
Koelle earned his B.S. in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Washington in 1980 and his M.D. from the same institution in 1985. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Tufts-New England Medical Center and a fellowship in infectious diseases at UW. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.