Timothy Johnston, PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher

NIH/NIAID Vaccine Research Center

Education

BS in Biology, University of Minnesota

PhD Immunology, University of Pennsylvania, 2026 (Mentor: Dr. Daniel Douek, Vaccine Research Center, NIAID)

Thesis

Tim is interested in studying how initial exposures to SARS-CoV-2 shape humoral responses to future exposures to mutated variants of the virus. He hopes to use insights from single cell sequencing of B cells and monoclonal antibody production to improve vaccine design.

Publications from Graduate Work

  • Johnston, T.S., Li, S.H., Painter, M.M., Atkinson, R.K., Douek, N.R., Reeg, D.B., Douek, D.C., Wherry, E.J., Hensley, S.E. Immunological imprinting shapes the specificity of human antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2 variants. Immunity 2024 57:912-925 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2024.02.017
  • Matassoli, F., Cagigi, A., Shen, C.-H., Henry, A.R., Johnston, T.S., Schramm, C.A., Cottrell, C.A., Kalyuzhniy, O., Spangler, A., Ndung’u, T., Dong, K., Eller, L., Robb, M., Eller, M., Naluyima, P., Kwong, P.D., Douek, D.C., Schief, W.R., Andrews, S.F., McDermott, A.B. High frequency of HIV precursor-target-specific B cells in sub-Saharan populations. Cell Reports 2023 42:113450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2023.113450
  • Painter, M.M., Johnston, T.S., Lundgreen, K.A., Santos, J.J.S., Qin, J.S., Goel, R.R., Apostolidis, S.A., Mathew, D., Fulmer, B., Williams, J.C., McKeague, M.L., Pattekar, A., Goode, A., Nasta, S., Baxter, A.E., Giles, J.R., Skelly, A.N., Felley, L.E., McLaughlin, M., Weaver, J., Kuthuru, O., Dougherty, J., Adamski, S., Long, S., Kee, M., Clendenin, C., da Silva Antunes, R., Grifoni, A., Weiskopf, D., Sette, A., Huang, A.C., Rader, D.J., Hensley, S.E., Bates, P., Greenplate, A.R., Wherry, E.J. Prior vaccination promotes early activation of memory T cells and enhances immune responses during SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infection. Nature Immunology 2023 24:1711–1724. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-023-01613-y
  • Wang, S., Matassoli, F., Zhang, B., Liu, T., Shen, C.-H., Bylund, T., Johnston, T.S., Henry, A.R., Teng, I.-T., Tripathi, P., Becker, J.E., Changela, A., Chaudhary, R., Cheng, C., Gaudinski, M., Gorman, J., Harris, D.R., Lee, M., Morano, N.C., Novik, L., O’Dell, S., Olia, A.S., Parchment, D.K., Rawi, R., Roberts-Torres, J., Stephens, T., Tsybovsky, Y., Wang, D., Van Wazer, D.J., Zhou, T., Doria-Rose, N.A., Koup, R.A., Shapiro, L., Douek, D.C., McDermott, A.B., Kwong, P.D. HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies elicited in humans by a prefusion-stabilized envelope trimer form a reproducible class targeting fusion peptide. Cell Reports 2023 42:112755 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2023.11275
  • Yogev, O., Weissbrod, O., Battistoni, G., Bressan, D., Naamati, A., Falciatori, I., Berkyurek, A.C., Rasnic, R., Izuagbe, R., Hosmillo, M., Ilan, S., Grossman, I., McCormick, L., Honeycutt, C.C., Johnston, T.S., Gagne, M., Douek, D.C., Goodfellow, I., Hannon, G.J., Erlich, Y. From a genome-wide screen of RNAi molecules against SARS-CoV-2 to a validated broad-spectrum and potent prophylaxis. Communications Biology 2023 6:1–12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04589-5