I have worked in the field of primary immunodeficiency disorders since the 1970's, first at the Institute of Child Health in London and subsequently at the University of Colorado. Clinical activities led to the recognition of SCID in the Navajo and, later, the identification of bile duct cancers in several of my XHIM patients. While these grew into gene-hunting and basic research activities of their own, I also pursued immunity to HSV in the survivors of neonatal infections, and in the cutaneous and CNS recurrences they experienced. This project required lymphocyte culture approaches that could be used to estimate responder cell frequencies: methods that I subsequently applied to patients before and after shingles. Data from these studies was instrumental in the FDA allowing an experimental shingles vaccine to be tested in the 90’s. From 2001 to 2014 I worked for the NIH, first as Director of the National Center for Research Resources GCRC and, after 2005, the Clinical and Translational Science Award program. I have returned to academia at Brown, and primary immunodeficiency, currently cooperating with labs at Yale and the NIH to work on TLR7 and moesin variants that cause immunodeficiency or autoimmunity.
