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.
2016 Sep
Lambert Emo K, Hyun YM, Reilly E, Barilla C, Gerber S, Fowell D, Kim M, Topham DJ. "Live Imaging of Influenza Infection of the Trachea Reveals Dynamic Regulation of CD8+ T Cell Motility by Antigen." PLoS pathogens. 2016 Sep; 12(9):e1005881. Epub 2016 Sep 19. |
2016 Jul 15
Nogales A, DeDiego ML, Topham DJ, Martínez-Sobrido L. "Rearrangement of Influenza Virus Spliced Segments for the Development of Live-Attenuated Vaccines." Journal of virology. 2016 Jul 15; 90(14):6291-302. Epub 2016 Jun 24. |
2016 Jun
DeDiego ML, Anderson CS, Yang H, Holden-Wiltse J, Fitzgerald T, Treanor JJ, Topham DJ. "Directed selection of influenza virus produces antigenic variants that match circulating human virus isolates and escape from vaccine-mediated immune protection." Immunology. 2016 Jun; 148(2):160-73. Epub 2016 Mar 30. |
2016
Yang H, Baker SF, González ME, Topham DJ, Martínez-Sobrido L, Zand M, Holden-Wiltse J, Wu H. "An improved method for estimating antibody titers in microneutralization assay using green fluorescent protein." Journal of biopharmaceutical statistics. 2016 26(3):409-20. Epub 2015 May 26. |
2016
Anderson CS, DeDiego ML, Topham DJ, Thakar J. "Boolean Modeling of Cellular and Molecular Pathways Involved in Influenza Infection." Computational and mathematical methods in medicine. 2016 2016:7686081. Epub 2016 Feb 14. |
