Clinician Investigator, Full Professor Infectious Disease, Mass General Research Institute

Professor of Medicine, Part-time Harvard Medical School

babesiosis; cd-4 response; cd-8 response; complement activation; complement c3a; folate receptor-alpha; guillain-barre syndrome; interleukin-1; pneumonia viral; scfvs; tumor antigens; tumor necrosis factor-alpha We have developed a novel approach for targeting (tumor) antigens whose sequence may not be known or structure even identified. We have linked scFV's to MycobacteriumTb HeatShockProtein 70, thus developing a novel fusion protein vaccine for presenting antigen to APCs in order to generate both a CD-4 and CD -8 response. The scFV’s can be selected for their binding to an uncharacterized antigen or to a characterized antigen by binding studies, and the appropriate V-genes can then be selected. The scFV genes are fused to the gene for MTb HSP 70, and the new fusion gene is expressed as the fusion protein in E. coli. We have succeeded in generating a fusion vaccine targeting Folate Receptor-alpha, hyper-expressed in ovarian and many breast tumors.