- Affiliate Assistant Professor, Global Health
- Affiliate Assistant Professor, Immunology
Select from the following:
Most vaccines provide protection by inducing the production of antibodies that can bind to a pathogen and block infection. Unfortunately, there are many dangerous viruses in which the development of a vaccine has been elusive despite decades of research. These failures highlight gaps in knowledge about the type of cell that can produce antibodies, the B cell. The Taylor lab has undertaken two approaches to help protect people from infection. In one approach, we aim to inform vaccine design by gaining a deeper understanding about the mechanisms limiting the generation of a protective B cell response. To do this, we study B cell responses in humans and murine models beginning with the rare pathogen-specific “naïve” B cells present prior to the vaccination using an enrichment method we recently developed. Our second approach is to bypass vaccination and use genetic engineering to generate B cells that produce the types of protective antibodies that vaccination aims to generate.
- PhD (University of Pennsylvania)
- Bioengineering
- COVID-19
- Drug and Vaccine Development
- HIV/AIDS
- Immunizations
- Infectious Diseases
- Infectious Diseases (other than STDs)
- STDs (other than HIV)
- Viruses
Moffett HF, Harms CK, Fitzpatrick KS, Tooley MR, Boonyaratanakornkit J, Taylor JJ. B cells engineered to express pathogen-specific antibodies protect against infection. Sci Immunol. 4 (35), 2019 [PMID: 31101673].
Taylor JJ, Pape KA, Steach HR, Jenkins MK. Humoral immunity. Apoptosis and antigen affinity limit effector cell differentiation of a single naïve B cell. Science 347(6223):784-87, 2015 [PMCID: PMC4412594].
Taylor JJ, Laudenbach M, Tucker AM, Jenkins MK, Pravetoni M. Hapten-specific naïve B cells are biomarkers of vaccine efficacy against drugs of abuse. J Immunol Methods 405:74-86, 2014 [PMCID: PMC4018303].
Taylor JJ, Pape KA, Jenkins MK. A germinal center-independent pathway generates unswitched memory B cells early in the primary response. J Exp Med 209(3):597-606, 2012 [PMCID: PMC3302224].
Taylor JJ, Martinez RJ, Titcombe PJ, Barsness LO, Thomas SR, Zhang N, Katzman SD, Jenkins MK, Mueller DL. Deletion and anergy of polyclonal B cells specific for ubiquitous membrane bound self antigen. J Exp Med 209(11):2065-2077, 2012 [PMCID: PMC3478923].