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.
2015 Jan 15
Sundararajan A, Sangster MY, Frey S, Atmar RL, Chen WH, Ferreira J, Bargatze R, Mendelman PM, Treanor JJ, Topham DJ. "Robust mucosal-homing antibody-secreting B cell responses induced by intramuscular administration of adjuvanted bivalent human norovirus-like particle vaccine." Vaccine. 2015 Jan 15; 33(4):568-76. Epub 2014 Nov 22. |
2014 Nov 28
Babu TM, Levine M, Fitzgerald T, Luke C, Sangster MY, Jin H, Topham D, Katz J, Treanor J, Subbarao K. "Live attenuated H7N7 influenza vaccine primes for a vigorous antibody response to inactivated H7N7 influenza vaccine." Vaccine. 2014 Nov 28; 32(50):6798-804. Epub 2014 Oct 16. |
2014 Oct
Guo H, Baker S, Martínez-Sobrido L, Topham DJ. "Induction of CD8 T cell heterologous protection by a single dose of single-cycle infectious influenza virus." Journal of virology. 2014 Oct; 88(20):12006-16. Epub 2014 Aug 06. |
2014 Sep
Nogales A, Baker SF, Ortiz-Riaño E, Dewhurst S, Topham DJ, Martínez-Sobrido L. "Influenza A virus attenuation by codon deoptimization of the NS gene for vaccine development." Journal of virology. 2014 Sep; 88(18):10525-40. Epub 2014 Jun 25. |
2014 Sep
Baker SF, Nogales A, Finch C, Tuffy KM, Domm W, Perez DR, Topham DJ, Martínez-Sobrido L. "Influenza A and B virus intertypic reassortment through compatible viral packaging signals." Journal of virology. 2014 Sep; 88(18):10778-91. Epub 2014 Jul 09. |
