Professor, Presbyterian Health Foundation Presidential Professor
Research Interests:
Humoral Immunity to C. difficile. Infection of the gut with the C. difficile bacterium can result in mild, moderate or severe disease, but a major contributor to morbidity and mortality is reinfection. As a result of reinfection, pathology is compounded by increasingly severe tissue damage and the manifestation of a local infection as a systemic disease., leading to several thousand deaths in the USA each year. Our laboratory has focused on the adaptive immune response following infection and has observed that infection is poorly immunizing in this regard. This is characterized by a notable lack of indicators of B cell memory and a poor antibody response to the initial infection.
Our primary goal is therefore to understand the B cell response to single and repeat infection and to vaccination. With support from an NIH-funded U19 award (U19 AI174994, Advancing a second generation C. difficile vaccine, PI: Dr. Lang), we are working towards a better understanding of these issues in people who have previously been infected with C. difficile.
Our research also involves mechanism by which C. difficile toxins suppress B cell responses. We have discovered a mechanism whereby formation of lymphoid structures necessary for development of B cell memory are severely constrained by toxins. This work is performed collaboratively with Drs. Ballard and Cox who are both project leaders on the U19 program, who have distinct but complementary interests to those pursued in the Lang laboratory.
Other Research Interests I provide advice and consultation on B cell biology to colleagues in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, other basic science departments, clinical departments, and the Stephenson Cancer Center. This has resulted in recent joint publications in vaccine development, Covid-19, kidney disease, and cancer (listed below).