Departmental Affiliations
Research Interests
Human immunology, vaccines, immunometabolism, adaptive immunity, innate immunity, vaccine adjuvants, immunosuppression
Experiences & Accomplishments
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to develop and rapidly deploy highly immunogenic vaccines. However, insufficient immune responses in immunocompromised individuals have emphasized that novel vaccine formulations may be required for specific populations to overcome immunosuppression. Baseline immune profiles that could influence vaccine responses may be altered by age, infection, co-morbidities and even geographical location. To date, the basic immunology behind successful vaccine responses in these various contexts has not been well characterized. By dissecting the immunologic and metabolic landscape following vaccination and infection in a variety of human populations, we hope to generate building blocks to reverse engineer vaccines for specific patient populations. We aim to uncover fundamental aspects of human cellular biology while contributing to rational vaccine design and therapeutic interventions. Primary techniques involve high dimensional flow cytometry, single cell RNA sequencing, metabolomics, and in vitro co-culture systems.
Select Publications
Selected recent publications:
Thompson EA, Ngecu W, Stoddart L, Johnston TS, Chang A, Cascino K, Mitchell J, Tobian AAR, Werbel WA, Karaba AH, Blankson JN, Cox AL. Heterologous versus homologous boosting regimens elicit qualitatively distinct BA.5-cross reactive T cells in transplant recipients. JCI Insight. 2023 PubMed PMID: 37104041
Roznik K, Andargie ET, JohnstonTS, Gordon O, Wang Y, Peart Akindele N, Persaud D, Antar AR, Manabe YC, Zhou W, Ji H, Agbor-Enoh S, Karaba AH, ThompsonEA, Cox AL. Emergency myelopoiesis distinguishes multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children from pediatric severe COVID-19. Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2024. PubMed PMID: 38299308
Roznik K, Xue J, Stavrakis G, Johnston TJ, Kalluri D, AbedonR, Qin CX, McAteer J, Mogul D, WerbelWA, Karaba AH, Thompson EA, Cox AL. Pediatric solid organ transplant recipients exhibit qualitatively different CD4+ T cell responses compared to immunocompetent children following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination. Npj Vaccines. 2024. PubMed PMID: 38580714
Thompson EA*, Cascino K*, Ordonez AA, Zhou W, Vaghasia A, Hamacher-Brady A, Brady NR, Sun I, Wang R, Rosenberg AZ, Delannoy M, Rothman R, Fenstermacher K, Sauer L, Shaw-Saliba K, Bloch EM, Redd AD, Tobian AR, Horton M, Smith K, Pekosz A, D’Alessio FR, Yegnasubramanian S, Ji H, Cox AL*, Powell JD*. Metabolic programs define dysfunctional immune responses in severe COVID-19 patients. Cell Reports. 2021. PubMed PMID: 33691089
Thompson EA*, Darrah PA, Foulds KE, Hoffer E, Caffrey-Carr A, Norenstedt S, Perbeck L, Seder RA, Kedl RM, Loré K*. Monocytes Acquire the Ability to Prime Tissue-Resident T Cells via IL-10-Mediated TGF-β Release. Cell Reports. 2019. PubMed PMID: 31365858 *corresponding authors