Professional Bio
David Topham joined the faculty at the University of Rochester Medical Center in 1999 and was appointed in 2009 as Vice Provost and Executive Director of the Health Science Center for Computational Innovation (HSCCI), a partnership between the University and IBM. As Executive Director of the HSCCI, Dr. Topham's responsibility is to support collaboration in biomedical research using High Performance Computational Resources. He will bring together academic biomedical and health-related Research Investigators, High Performance Computational Biologists, and HP Research Computing resources. Dr. Topham provides strategic direction to the HSCCI and facilitates the development of research projects between UR scientists and its corporate partners, as well as support from state and federal agencies.
Dr. Topham is an Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, a member of the David H. Smith Center for Vaccine Biology and Immunology, and co-directs the New York Influenza Center of Excellence--one of the six national Centers of Excellence in Influenza Research and Surveillance supported by the National Institutes of Health. He has also served on IBM's Global Pandemic Steering Committee. His research interests are in the area of immune responses to influenza and experimental vaccines, and include computational modeling of the immune system.
Research Bio
Virus infections of the respiratory tract are responsible for a great deal of illness and even death among the world's human population. Influenza, in particular, has a history of causing deadly pandemics and the continuing emergence of highly pathogenic H5 influenzas around the world is reason for concern. It is essential to understand how the immune system clears a virus infection and provides long term immunity if we are to design more rational vaccination and treatment strategies. The lab has a combined program in basic research using animal models of influenza infection and immunity, as well as a translational research program to study human immune responses to influenza infection and vaccination.
Within these programs we are investigating the mechanisms that provide optimal immune protection against influenza virus. One particular focus is to understand how T cells are regulated in the environment of the lung tissue and airways. We believe this is the key to generating long-lived protective immunity against diverse influenza viruses, including potential pandemic strains. The concepts and information we gather from the animal models are being directly translated into the human situation. To this end, we have established the New York Influenza Center of Excellence, a robust, collaborative program for basic and translational investigation of influenza virology, pathogenesis, immunology, and vaccines.
2013 Jan 15
He XS, Sasaki S, Baer J, Khurana S, Golding H, Treanor JJ, Topham DJ, Sangster MY, Jin H, Dekker CL, Subbarao K, Greenberg HB. "Heterovariant cross-reactive B-cell responses induced by the 2009 pandemic influenza virus A subtype H1N1 vaccine." The Journal of infectious diseases. 2013 Jan 15; 207(2):288-96. Epub 2012 Oct 29. |
2012 Nov
Scheible K, Secor-Socha S, Wightman T, Wang H, Mariani TJ, Topham DJ, Pryhuber G, Quataert S. "Stability of T cell phenotype and functional assays following heparinized umbilical cord blood collection." Cytometry. Part A : the journal of the International Society for
Analytical Cytology. 2012 Nov 0; 81(11):937-49. Epub 2012 Oct 01. |
2012 Oct 5
van Helden MJ, van Kooten PJ, Bekker CP, Gröne A, Topham DJ, Easton AJ, Boog CJ, Busch DH, Zaiss DM, Sijts AJ. "Pre-existing virus-specific CD8(+) T-cells provide protection against pneumovirus-induced disease in mice." Vaccine. 2012 Oct 5; 30(45):6382-8. Epub 2012 Aug 29. |
2012 Sep 1
van Helden MJ, de Graaf N, Boog CJ, Topham DJ, Zaiss DM, Sijts AJ. "The bone marrow functions as the central site of proliferation for long-lived NK cells." Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950). 2012 Sep 1; 189(5):2333-7. Epub 2012 Jul 20. |
2012 Jul 15
Chapman LM, Aggrey AA, Field DJ, Srivastava K, Ture S, Yui K, Topham DJ, Baldwin WM, Morrell CN. "Platelets present antigen in the context of MHC class I." Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950). 2012 Jul 15; 189(2):916-23. Epub 2012 Jun 15. |
