Chris Buck | Senior Investigator
National Cancer institute
Dr. Buck received a bachelor’s degree in Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He then returned to his home state, Maryland, to earn a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Buck’s graduate research in Dr. Robert Siliciano's lab focused on the translation and immunogenicity of the HIV-1 capsid protein Gag. For his graduate work, Dr. Buck received the Alicia Showalter Reynolds Award. In 2001, Dr. Buck began post-doctoral training in the Lab of Cellular Oncology, where he developed systems for producing human papillomavirus (HPV)-based gene transfer vectors (pseudoviruses). His work using HPV vectors ranged from basic studies of HPV virion structure and morphogenesis to translational research identifying candidate topical microbicides for blocking HPV transmission. For his work in these areas, Dr. Buck, and his mentors, Drs. John Schiller and Doug Lowy, shared the 2006 Norman P. Salzman Award. In 2007, Dr. Buck joined the faculty of the NCI’s Center for Cancer Research as an Investigator. In 2013, he shared a second Salzman Award in recognition of his mentoring of Dr. Rachel Schowalter. Dr. Buck was awarded tenure in 2014.
Appearances:
Main Congress Day 3 - 24th April @ 09:10
How to Make and Share Vaccine-Style Beer
Although early vaccines consisted of crude preparations of live pathogens delivered via oral, intranasal, or intradermal routes, safer modern vaccines tend to use killed pathogens or purified subunits that are injected intramuscularly. There had been a general dogma that oral vaccine delivery can only work with live pathogens, but a recently developed cholera vaccine using orally delivered killed bacteria and a recombinant toxin subunit is highly effective. We hypothesized that a recombinant subunit vaccine targeting the BK polyomavirus (BKV) major capsid protein, VP1, might be immunogenic when administered via oral, nasal, dermal, or rectal routes. Purified BKV VP1 virus-like particles (VLPs) administered intranasally or intradermally elicited average neutralizing antibody titers of roughly 900,000 and 7,500, respectively. Oral and rectal administration of purified VLPs did not induce detectable antibody responses. To test the idea that the immunogenicity of purified VLPs might be degraded by exposure to stomach acid or digestive enzymes, we administered VLPs protected within live brewer’s yeast engineered to express BKV VP1. Mice that ate live yeast mixed with regular mouse chow developed average neutralizing titers above 10,000 - a level that has previously been shown to correlate with resistance to BKV-induced kidney disease in organ transplant patients. The results open the door to the rapid development of vaccine-style beer that can be marketed with structure/function claims along the lines of “supports healthy immune system function,” in compliance with the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Plasmids will be shared under OpenMTA.
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