Alter To Deliver 2024 NIAID Chanock Lecture
Dr. Galit Alter, distinguished immunologist, virologist and vice president of immunology research at Moderna, will deliver this year’s NIAID Robert M. Chanock Memorial Lecture.
Her talk, “Defining Humoral Correlates of Immunity Across Pathogens,” will take place on Tuesday, May 14, at 9 a.m. in the Bldg. 50 first floor conference room. The lecture is in-person only, and all members of the NIH community are welcome to attend. The lecture honors Chanock, who served as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Infectious Diseases for more than three decades.
Alter established her laboratory at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General, MIT and Harvard. There, she developed new tools to study how antibodies could direct the potent activity of the innate immune system. She found inspiration in the field of systems immunology, an innovative approach to designing and developing vaccines. This approach directed her efforts toward defining the unexplored role of the humoral immune response in fighting global threats such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, Ebola, influenza and more.
Her work in this area resulted in developing a new field of study called systems serology that aims to improve our understanding of how the immune system works. This field, combined with systems-based antibody Fc-engineering, has begun to define the mechanistic basis of protection against pathogens within tissues.
In her lecture, Alter will discuss how comprehensive antibody profiling strategies, including systems serology, provide critical insights into mechanisms by which humoral immune response can leverage the innate immune system to fight and control disease. Coupled with next-generation vaccine strategies, understanding the correlates of immunity may help guide the development of new classes of highly effective vaccines for some of our most elusive pathogens.
Alter is a member of the American Society of Immunologists and Glycobiologists, has received awards from Merck, NIH and the German Society for Virology, sits on advisory boards for the Pasteur Institute and the Instituto de Medicina Molecular, and serves on organizing committees for the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies, Keystone Sympsosia and the mRNA Health Conference.