Robert Seder, MD

Chief, Cellular Immunology Section, Vaccine Research Center at NIAID, NIH

Speaker

Dr. Seder is currently Acting Associate Director and Chief of the Cellular Immunology Section at The Vaccine Research Center, NIAID, NIH. Dr. Seder's laboratory has focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which vaccines and adjuvants mediate protective immunity in mouse, and non-human primate models of HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis and cancer. His laboratory has made seminal contributions on elucidating the importance of T cell quality on immune protection and he was the first to show that multi-functional T cells were correlated with vaccine mediated protection against various infections. He has made important contributions in showing that the intravenous route of vaccination was critical for generating tissue resident T cells required for protection against malaria and TB in pre-clinical animal models. Based on this work, Dr. Seder led the first in human clinical studies using intravenous vaccination to generate protective immunity with an attenuated malaria vaccine that was highly protective. Dr. Seder has also developed a personalized nanoparticle neoantigen vaccine that has been licensed for clinical trials and conceptualized a new paradigm termed “Vax-Innate “to harness the ability of the vaccines to enhance T cell immunity as well as alter the tumor microenvironment to facilitate tumor clearance. Dr. Seder was intimately involved with his colleagues at The Vaccine Research Center in the development of the Moderna mRNA vaccine as well as a protein-based vaccine against COVID and was a member of Operation Warp Speed. His work in the pre-clinical models provided evidence for how immune boosting against variants could alter imprinted B cell responses and lead to protection which was critical for informing implementation in humans. Over the past several years Dr. Seder has led the global development of using a monoclonal antibody to prevent malaria infection across all ages in Africa.