Faculty
Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D.
Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research, Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation, Director of Vaccine Research in the Infectious Diseases Division
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Dr. Weissman, 2023 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1981 and his M.D./Ph.D. from Boston University in 1987 before completing his medical Residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts in 1990. He completed his Fellowship in Immunology at the Lab of Immunoregulation in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease of the National Institutes of Health, serving in the lab of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Following his Fellowship, Dr. Weissman became an Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Disease at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. In 2005, he was promoted to Associate Professor, and to full Professor in 2012.
His major contributions to the scientific field include the identification of the mechanism by which RNA activates the innate immune system, and that naturally occurring modified nucleosides were the mechanism used by the cell to distinguish foreign RNA from self RNA. Further, Dr. Weissman and his colleagues identified that nucleoside modified mRNA not only did not cause inflammation, but that it was also more stable and efficiently translated than conventional mRNA and went on to develop nucleoside modified mRNA as a delivery system for therapeutic proteins. Building on this work, Dr. Weissman and his colleagues began using nucleoside modified mRNA complexed to lipid nanoparticles to deliver therapeutic mRNA as a vaccine platform, resulting in high titers of neutralizing antibodies against many different pathogens with minimal doses. In addition, Dr. Weissman and his collaborators analyzed the mechanisms that HIV envelope uses to suppress the immune system and proceeded to alter the envelope immunogen to improve responses against it when used in an encoding vaccine.
Dr. Weissman’s work has resulted in the publication of more than 100 papers. He holds many patents, including the ones which detail the modifications required to make mRNA suitable for vaccines and other therapies.
Elena Atochina-Vasserman, M.D., Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor of Medicine
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Dr. Elena Atochina-Vasserman is a Research Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, and in the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her M.D. from Tomsk Medical School and a Ph.D. from the Cardiology Research Center in Moscow, Russia.
Dr. Atochina-Vasserman began her research career studying the targeted delivery of therapeutics to the pulmonary angiotensin-converting enzyme. She later completed her postdoctoral training at the Institute for Environmental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Drs. Aron Fisher and Vladimir Muzykantov, focusing on targeted enzyme therapeutics for the treatment of oxidative stress and inflammation in lung. Following her postdoctoral work, Elena was appointed as a Research Associate, later promoted to Senior Research Investigator under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Beers, and subsequently became an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Division at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Her research during this time concentrated on lung host defense, inflammation, and innate immunity.
In 2018, Dr. Atochina-Vasserman joined the laboratory of Dr. Drew Weissman, where she leads projects focused on the development of novel one-component nanoparticles as a delivery platform for efficient mRNA vaccines and therapeutics. Her research also centers on the targeted delivery of mRNA therapeutics to the lungs for the treatment of various pulmonary diseases.
Dr. Atochina-Vasserman has authored more than 120 publications with h-index of 37, holds several patents, and serves as a peer reviewer for numerous scientific journals and grant organizations, including the NIH, AHA, and Asthma UK.
Sita Awasthi, Ph.D.
Visiting Faculty / Associate Professor Research
Dr. Awasthi is an Associate Professor Research in the Department of Medicine, Infectious disease division, Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been studying human herpes viruses and their strategies to evade host immune systems for about two decades. In the laboratory of Dr. Friedman, she has exploited the viral immune evasion mechanisms to develop vaccine candidates against genital herpes. In more recent years, she combined mRNA-LNP vaccine technology and immune evasion strategy and led a candidate vaccine for prevention of genital herpes from preclinical to early phase clinical trial.
She is currently doing her sabbatical in Dr. Weissman’s laboratory and engaged in developing mRNA encoded monoclonal antibody therapy for treatment of viral encephalitis and neonatal herpes infection. Dr. Awasthi is an active participant in the wider scientific community in many educational and advisory capacities including biotech companies. She has served on many national and international grant review study sections. She had been on the board of Association of Women in Science, Philadelphia Chapter.
Angela Desmond, M.D., Ph.D.
Instructor
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Dr. Angela Desmond received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 and her doctoral degrees in medicine and immunology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 2015. Under the mentorship of Dr. Ellen Vitetta, her thesis work focused on vaccine development using peptoids, or peptide-like bioinspired polymers. Dr. Desmond then completed residency in pediatrics at McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
She then undertook fellowship training in pediatric infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia starting in 2018. For her fellowship research project, she joined the laboratories of Drs. Harvey Friedman and Drew Weissman at the University of Pennsylvania during the summer of 2019. She is currently investigating the mechanisms by which an mRNA-lipid nanoparticle vaccine candidate against herpes simplex virus (HSV) can protect neonates against HSV infection in a mouse model. Dr. Desmond seeks to integrate her clinical care and basic science research experience to develop vaccines that protect patients across the lifespan, starting with maternal vaccines that protect their vulnerable babies from severe infections early in life. She plans to leverage her fellowship training experience to transition to an independent clinician-investigator.
Edward (Ted) Kreider, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
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Dr. Ted Kreider received his B.A. in Biochemistry and M.S. in Chemistry in 2006 from the University of Pennsylvania as a scholar in the Vagelos Program in the Molecular Life Sciences. He then matriculated into the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania where he completed his thesis work in the Laboratory of Dr. Beatrice Hahn studying novel pathways of HIV-1 immune evasion from host B and T cell responses. After completing his medical training, he matched into the Internal Medicine residency as a member of the Physician Scientist Pathway (PSP) at Penn and ultimately fast-tracked into Infectious Disease fellowship training. He joined Dr. Drew Weissman’s lab in July of 2021 after completing his first year of fellowship.
Jilian Melamed, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
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Dr. Jilian Melamed earned her B.S. in biomedical engineering from Rutgers University in 2013. She went on to pursue her Ph.D. at the University of Delaware under Dr. Emily Day. Her thesis work focused on developing gold-based nanoparticles for siRNA delivery to glioblastoma and on Hedgehog signaling as a key mediator of glioblastoma resistance to chemotherapy. After graduating in 2018, she began working for Dr. Kathryn Whitehead at Carnegie Mellon University as an NIH F32 Postdoctoral Fellow, where she discovered her love of all things mRNA therapeutics. She joined Dr. Weissman's lab in January 2022 and works on projects involving targeted lipid nanoparticles for mRNA delivery.