Sing Sing Way, M.D., Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Department of Pediatrics
Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease

Worldwide, infectious agents remain the leading cause of mortality in infants, children, and adults. Vaccination is a highly efficacious and cost-effective means for infectious disease control, however existing vaccines primarily trigger antibody-mediated immunity that does not confer protection to intracellular pathogens such as Salmonoella, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and most viruses. Our laboratory uses experimental infection with the intracellular bacterium Listeria monocytogenes as a model to examine how pathogen specific CD8 and CD4 T cells are generated after infection in vivo with the long-term goal of more rational vaccine design that triggers protective T cell-mediated immunity.

Selected publications:

Way, S.S., Kolumam, G.A., Havenar-Daughton, C., Murali-Krishna, K., (2007) IL-12 and type I-IFN synergize for IFN-production by CD4 T cells, while neither are required for IFN- production by CD8 T cells after Listeria monocytogenes infection. J Immunol 178: 4498-4505.

Orr, M.T., Orgun, N.N., Wilson, C.B., Way, S.S. (2007) Cutting Edge: Recombinant Listeria monocytogenes expressing a single immune-dominant peptide confers protective immunity to herpes simplex virus-1 infection. J Immunol 178: 4731-4735.

Orgun, N.N. and Way, S.S. (2007) A critical role for phospholipase C in protective immunity conferred by Listeriolysin O-deficient Listeria monocytogenes (in press, Microbial Pathogenesis).

Other links:

http://www.micab.umn.edu/faculty/Way.html
http://www.med.umn.edu/peds/id/faculty/way/home.html