Principal Investigators

Richard Malley

Richard Malley, MD

Co-Principal Investigator, Contact PI

Dr. Malley is one of the world leaders in immune mechanisms of protection against pneumococcus. His research focuses on vaccine development and bacterial pathogenesis. He has been and remains funded by NIH, PATH and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). In collaboration with PATH and the BMGF, Dr. Malley led an international effort to develop a pneumococcal vaccine for developing countries. In 2014, he and collaborators Fan Zhang and Yingjie Lu founded Affinivax, a biotechnology company seed-funded by BMGF and based on the novel MAPS platform to develop vaccines for developed and developing countries, with an initial focus on S. pneumoniae. A 24-valent pneumococcal MAPS vaccine received breakthrough designation by the US FDA, is currently in Phase 2 in infants and was successfully studied in Phase 2 in older adults, with Phase 3 clinical trials to begin soon. 

Dr. Malley's research profile
Gregory Priebe, MD

Gregory Priebe, MD

Co-Principal Investigator

Dr. Priebe is an international expert on vaccines for Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common cause of hospital-acquired infections and of chronic lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis.  His basic research laboratory in the Enders Research Building at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) studies bacterial infections and host defense, focusing on the Gram‐negative pathogens Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the Burkholderia cepacia complex, all with the overarching goal of developing vaccines and therapeutics for hospital‐acquired infections. A major focus of the lab, with funding from the NIH, DoD, and Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, is vaccine development for Pseudomonas aeruginosa, including live‐attenuated vaccines as well as multicomponent vaccines comprised of proteins that stimulate T cell‐mediated protection by Th17 cells, which are CD4+ T cells secreting the cytokine IL-17. 

Dr. Priebe also serves as Director of Research in the Division of Critical Care Medicine at BCH and as Director of BCH’s Translational Research for Infection Prevention in Pediatric Anesthesia and Critical Care (TRIPPACC) Program, a multidisciplinary group of investigators using whole‐genome sequencing of bacteria from clinical samples to explore transmission and the evolution of antibiotic resistance and pathogenicity. 

Dr. Priebe's research profile
Tulane Kolls

Jay K. Kolls, MD

Co-Principal Investigator

Dr. Kolls has pioneered several areas of bio-medical research. His initial NIH support was related to mechanism by which ethanol abuse predisposes to bacterial pneumonia and his laboratory showed that ethanol can directly inhibit enzymatic cleavage and release of TNF-alpha contributing to impaired pulmonary host defenses. Moreover, he showed that this defect in TNF synthesis could be overcome by interferon-gamma treatment in macrophages. 

Building on further understanding mechanisms of pulmonary immunity, Kolls began exploring host defenses against the major pulmonary pathogen causing pneumonia in HIV infected hosts, namely Pneumocystis. Kolls has made seminal insight to both innate and adaptive immunity to this pathogen. His lab showed that the in vivo administration of interferon-gamma has therapeutic efficacy in CD4+ T-cell depleted mice that otherwise permissive to this infection. He showed that this effect was mediated by interferon-gamma producing CD8+ T-cells that are recruited by a CXCR3 dependent mechanism. In a landmark cover paper in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Kolls and colleagues showed that Pneumocystis is phagocytosed in killed through the Dectin-1 b-glucan receptor. CD8+ T-cells that have effector activity against Pneumocystis have augmented GM-CSF production which can upregulate Dectin-1 dependent killing of the organism. 

Dr. Koll's full profile