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Dr. John Mascola, director of the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center at NIAID, will deliver the 2016 Joseph J. Kinyoun Memorial Lecture on Thursday, Dec. 8, at 3 p.m. in Lipsett Amphitheater, Bldg. 10.
His talk, titled “Structure-Based Vaccine Design and B-cell Ontogeny in the Modern Era of Vaccinology,” will include an overview of the challenges facing the development of effective vaccines against viruses, including HIV, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza virus. Mascola will describe how researchers can use structural information about viral proteins and antiviral antibodies to design new vaccines. He also will discuss how an understanding of antibody evolution, termed B-cell ontogeny, can inform approaches to improving vaccines.
Mascola, an internationally recognized expert on HIV immunology and vaccine development, was appointed VRC director in Oct. 2013. In this role, he oversees a basic and translational research program aimed at developing and testing candidate vaccines against HIV, influenza virus, Zika virus and other infectious agents that cause diseases of global importance. He also serves as chief of the Virology Laboratory and chief of the Humoral Immunology Section at the VRC, where his research focuses on structure-based design and testing of novel vaccines for HIV/AIDS and influenza, optimization of immune responses, and identification of correlates of protection. Mascola is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and Fellowship in the American Academy for Microbiology.
Mascola obtained his medical degree in 1985 and completed training in internal medicine and infectious diseases, followed by a fellowship in retrovirology. He joined the VRC as deputy director in 2000. Prior to joining the VRC, he was head of HIV prevention research in the division of retrovirology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Since 1979, NIAID has hosted an annual public lecture in honor of Dr. Joseph J. Kinyoun, who in 1887 founded the Laboratory of Hygiene, the forerunner of NIH, and launched a new era of scientific study of infectious diseases.
