Wolfgang Leitner | Chief, Innate Immunity Section
National Institute of Health - NIAID

Wolfgang Leitner is the chief of the Innate Immunity Section of the Basic Immunology Branch/Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation (DAIT), at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID/NIH). He oversees the NIAID Vaccine Adjuvant Program, and his section manages NIAID’s grant portfolio in the area of innate immunity. Wolfgang joined NIAID’s extramural Program in 2008, after working on conventional and self-replicating DNA and RNA-based vaccines and adjuvants for melanoma and T cell lymphoma at the National Cancer Institute (NCI/NIH) for a decade. He became interested in DNA vaccines during his postdoc at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR; Washington, DC), where he developed the first DNA-based vaccine for P. berghei malaria. Wolfgang received his PhD from the University of Salzburg, Austria, defining the immunological differences between the spleen and splenic autotransplants, which are responsible for the impairment of certain immunological functions of the transplanted tissue.