ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2024

Flaviviruses are enveloped positive stranded RNA viruses that pose a growing threat to the human population and cause millions of infections annually. They are vector-borne, transmitted by ticks and mosquitoes, and cause a spectrum of disease manifestations including febrile illness, encephalitides that can cause lifelong complications, Congenital Zika Syndrome and dengue hemorrhagic fever and shock syndromes. For dengue and Zika viruses, major targets of protective antibody responses are known from studying and generating neutralizing monoclonal antibodies from the memory B cell compartment of the immune system, however, it is not yet known what the serum antibody targets are. Alena Janda Markmann, MD focuses her research on using novel sequencing, imaging and viral cloning techniques in order to understand what the neutralizing and protective antibody targets are in polyclonal human sera from individuals infected with dengue and Zika viruses. In addition, she and colleagues are continuing and expanding the work on understanding memory B cell targets of protective antibodies so that they can identify and understand the difference between viral targets in these two immune compartments. This work will help gain insights into critical protective viral immune targets in order to inform successful vaccine design.