• Immunology and immunological diseases
• Developmental immunology/ neonatal immunology
• Infectious disease
• Vaccines

As you read this paragraph, two infants in the world will have died from an infection for which there is an effective vaccine.  Worldwide we could save 5 million infants every year - if only we could immunize them on time. There appear to be many reasons - none of them insurmountable - why the world fails to save the lives of these - our - children. 

The work in our lab focuses on part of the science to help solve this problem: we are developing a vaccine system that with only one immunization given at birth will protect from a wide range of specific infectious diseases, as well as from allergies, autoimmune diseases and malignancies, for the entire life.

That is a big task, but we don’t naively underestimate the hurdles before us. But eventually, we will achieve this goal - if only because of the moral and ethical imperative we face: we owe it to the 5 million infants that die from vaccine-preventable infections every year.

We are systematically analyzing the human neonatal and infant response to danger signals (e.g. TLR-ligands) and vaccines. This way we will learn what aspects of the newborn's immune system work well. With that knowledge, we hope to identify immune modulators or vaccine adjuvants that would help protect newborns from disease, and aid in their immune response to vaccines. This work is done in close collaboration with several larger national and international research centers through large clinical trials. Our lab uses state-of-the-art technology to get the most information out of the smallest samples. We also are developing the necessary bioinformatics tools to enable optimal analysis and mining of this complex set of information.

Parallel to the human descriptive studies, we are developing a vaccine platform in animals, where we can test our vaccines and define the exact molecular mechanisms at work. For example, we use genetically altered strains of Listeria monocytogenes to target our vaccines to only those cells we want to infect, to then deliver its vaccine antigen, induce the desired immune response, and disappear - all without causing any harm to the newborn. Our preliminary data gives us great hope that our final goal is within reach.

B.A. Reikie, K.K. Smolen, D.I.M. Loeffler, B. Cai, D. Blimkie, E.S. Fortuno III, and T.R. Kollmann. A Single Immunization Near Birth Protects Immediately and For Life. Submitted.

T.R. Kollmann, J. Crabtree, A. Rein-Weston, D. Blimkie, F. Thomai, X. Wang, J. Furlong, E.S. Fortuno III, A.M. Hajjar, N. Hawkins, S. Self, C.B. Wilson. The neonatal innate immune system is not less responsive than the adult but responds differently. Submitted.

K.K. Smolen, D.I.M. Loeffler, L. Aplin, B.A. Reikie, B. Cai, E.S. Fortuno III, and T.R. Kollmann. Neonatal immunization with Listeria monocytogenes induces T cells with an adult-like avidity, sensitivity, and TCR-Vβ repertoire, and does not adversely impact the response to boosting. Submitted.

D. Blimkie, E.S. Fortuno III, F. Thommai, L. Xu, E. Fernandes, J. Crabtree, A. Rein-Weston, K. Jansen, C.B. Wilson, R.R. Brinkman and T.R. Kollmann.. Identification of B cells through negative gating—an example of the MIFlowCyt standard applied. Submitted.

Loeffler DI, Smolen K, Aplin L, Cai B, Kollmann TR.: Fine-tuning the safety and immunogenicity of Listeria monocytogenes-based neonatal vaccine platforms. Vaccine. 2009 Feb 5;27(6):919-27.

JA. Lee, J. Spidlen, S.Atwater, K. Boyce, J. Cai, N. Crosbie, M. Dalphin, J. Furlong, M. Gasparetto, M. Goldberg, B. Hyun, K. Jansen, T. Kollmann, M. Kong, D. Lary, R. Leif, S. McWeeney, TD. Moloshok, W. Moore, G. Nolan, J. Nolan, J. Nikolich-Zugich, D. Parrish, J. Price, B. Purcell, Y. Qian, B. Selvaraj, M. Simmerson, C. Smith, O. Tchuvatkina, P. Wilkinson, A. Wertheimer, C. Wilson, RH. Scheuermann, and RR. Brinkman. MIFlowCyt: The Minimum Information about a Flow Cytometry Experiment. Cytometry A, 73:926-930, 2008.

Jansen K., D. Blimkie, J. Furlong, A.M. Hajjar, A. Rein-Weston, J. Crabtree, B. Reikie, C.B. Wilson, and T.R. Kollmann. Polychromatic flow cytometric high-throughput assay to analyze the innate immune response to Toll-like receptor stimulation. Journal of Immunological Methods, 336:183, 2008.

T.R. Kollmann, B. Reikie, D. Blimkie, S. S. Way, K. Arispe, A. Shaulov, A.M. Hajjar, C.B. Wilson. Induction of Protective Immunity to Listeria monocytogenes in Neonates. Journal of Immunology, 178:3695, 2007.

TR Kollmann, SS Way, HL Harowicz, AM Hajjar, CB Wilson. Deficient MHC class I cross-presentation of soluble antigen by murine neonatal dendritic cells. Blood, 103:4240, 2004.

Canadian Child Health Clinician Scientist Carreer Development Award - 2007-2011

Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences - 2005-2010

Campbell Award for Excellence in Allergy Research - 2004

Pfizer Postdoctoral Fellowship in Infectious Diseases - 2001-2004

Special Alternate Pathway, American Board of Pediatrics - 2000

Alpha Omega Alpha (National Honor Medical Society) - 1998

Dr. Edgardo S. Fortuno III - Research Associate
Daniela Loeffler - Postdoctoral fellow
Darren Blimkie - Research Assistant
Darren Sutherland - Research Assistant
Bing Cai – Research Assistant
Kevin Ho - Research Assistant
Brian Reikie - Graduate Student
Kinga Smolen - Graduate Student
Nathan Corbett - Graduate Student
Kathleen Wee - Graduate Student
Charis Segeritz - Graduate Student
Rozanne Adams - Visiting Graduate Student
Lisa Franzen - Visiting Graduate Student
David Shih - Co-op Undergraduate Student
Anna Aquino - Work-Study Undergraduate Student