Yvonne Paterson, Ph.D.

Professor of Microbiology

Office Address:
Department of Microbiology
Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania
323 A Johnson Pavilion
3610 Hamilton Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6076

TEL 215-898-3461
LAB 215-898-2145
FAX 215-573-4666
yvonne@mail.med.upenn.edu

RESEARCH SUMMARY

The research performed in the Paterson laboratory is dedicated to harnessing the immune system to provide cures for, or protection against, neoplastic and infectious disease. There have been enormous advances made in the last few years in our understanding of the molecular and cellular machinery that renders proteins immunogenic. In our laboratory, we are applying this knowledge to the development of strategies to enhance the immune response in the design of more effective vaccines against viral diseases, such as HIV, and against tumor cells. To do this we are using a facultative intracellular bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, which has the unusual ability to live and grow in the cytoplasm of the cell. Our laboratory was the first to show that this bacterium could be used to target antigens to the MHC class I pathway for antigen processing with the induction of cytotoxic T cells and has pioneered the application of this organism in vaccine development over the past 15 years. We have shown that recombinant forms of this organism which have been transformed to express viral antigens from influenza, HIV and SIV are excellent vectors for inducing cell mediated immune responses both parenterally and at mucosal surfaces. We have also applied this technology in the development of cancer vaccines that result in the induction of potent cell mediated immunity that can eliminate established macroscopic tumors even in the face of profound immune tolerance to the tumor-associated antigen. In other studies, we have discovered that fusing an antigen to some bacterial proteins enhances its immunogenicity. This finding opens up novel, and perhaps safer, avenues to cancer immunotherapy. We are currently looking at a number of different approaches to carry these fusion proteins to the immune system for cancer immunotherapy. Cancers to which we are directing our various technologies currently include cervical cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, melanoma and lymphoma.