“New infectious agents originate all the time dating back to the plague in the siege of Athens in the 7th Century to the endemic flu in 1918 that killed 20 million people. For medical science, it’s a perennial race between new infectious diseases coming up and society reacting to them, understanding them and ultimately defeating them.” – Alessandro Sette, Ph.D.
Dr. Sette started at LIAI in 2002 as the Head of the Initiative for
Emerging Diseases and Biodefense. In 2003 he became the Head of the
Division of Translational Immunology. At LIAI, Dr. Sette's research
focuses on the identification of epitopes, working to understand how
vaccines should be constructed. The team's work is heavily focused on
emerging disease threats or bioterror threats, such as SARS, arena
viruses, smallpox and flu viruses. Dr. Sette's group is also leading an
effort to bring a premier collaboration resource to the scientific
community. The NIAID has awarded Dr. Sette a long-term contract to
design and produce a national Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) to aide in
the acceleration of vaccine-development on a global scale.
Dr. Sette received his degree in Biological Sciences from the
University of Roma, Laboratory of Pathology in 1984. In 1984, Dr. Sette
was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the same laboratory. From 1986-1988, he
joined The National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory
Medicine in Denver, in the USA as a post-doctoral fellow.
In 2002, Dr. Sette was named Adjunct Professor in the Department of
Experimental Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute, where he is
also Scientific Director of the Rheumatic Diseases Core Center since
2004. In 2003 he was named Adjunct Professor in the department of
Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Sette is a member of numerous grant review panels and a reviewer
for many scientific publications. He is also a member of the editorial
advisory board for Immunogenetics, Human Immunology, Current
Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Current Drugs, and Tissue Antigens
Alessandro Sette, Dr. Biol.Sc., and his laboratory study ways to fight
diseases by understanding the immune response, measuring immune
activity, and developing disease intervention strategies against a
number of new and emerging infectious diseases. These include
Influenza, arena viruses, a family of viruses responsible for
hemorrhagic fever and meningitis, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
(SARS) as well as diseases of renewed interest, such as smallpox,
because of the growing threat of bioterrorism. The laboratory is
defining in chemical terms what murine, non-human primate and human
immune system recognizes and uses this knowledge to measure and
understand anti-pathogen immune responses. This approach is helping
unlock the mysteries of how the body successfully battles infection,
and conversely, how pathogens escape the immune system, causing the
individual to succumb to disease. Form this data, Sette and his team
believe their research will lead to development of new therapeutic and
prophylactic approaches to fighting infectious diseases.
A major focus of the Sette's group is also the design and population of the
Immune Epitope Database,
developed under a NIAID contract. The database allows researchers
around the world to quickly access key information on the way the body
responds to disease-causing agents, especially those that are
responsible for emerging infectious diseases, or that are part of
potential bioterrorist threats. By allowing researchers to share and
analyze data in this unprecedented manner, the database provides an
important tool for accelerating the development and improvement of
vaccines.
Characterization of the peptide-binding specificity of the chimpanzee
class I alleles A*0301 and A*0401 using a combinatorial peptide library.Immunogenetics. 2007
Automating document classification for the Immune Epitope Database.BMC Bioinformatics. 2007
Chronic lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection actively
down-regulates CD4+ T cell responses directed against a broad range of
epitopes.J Immunol. 2007
A quantitative analysis of the variables affecting the repertoire of T
cell specificities recognized after vaccinia virus infection.J Immunol. 2007
Vaccinia virus-specific CD4+ T cell responses target a set of antigens
largely distinct from those targeted by CD8+ T cell responses.J Immunol. 2007
Integrating epitope data into the emerging web of biomedical knowledge resources.Nat Rev Immunol. 2007
The CD8+ T-cell response to lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus involves the L antigen: uncovering new tricks for an old virus.J Virol. 2007
Protein sequence database for pathogenic arenaviruses.Immunome Res. 2007
Towards a consensus on datasets and evaluation metrics for developing B-cell epitope prediction tools.J Mol Recognit. 2007
Ab and T cell epitopes of influenza A virus, knowledge and opportunities.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007
Immune epitope mapping in the post-genomic era: lessons for vaccine development.Curr Opin Immunol. 2007
Curation of complex, context-dependent immunological data. BMC Bioinformatics. 2006
Detailed characterization of the peptide binding specificity of five common Patr class I MHC molecules.Immunogenetics. 2006
A community resource benchmarking predictions of peptide binding to MHC-I molecules.PLoS Pathog. 2006
CD8+ T-Cell responses to Trypanosoma cruzi are highly focused on strain-variant trans-sialidase epitopes. PLoS Pathog. 2006
Curation of complex, context-dependent immunological data. BMC Bioinformatics. 2006
A community resource benchmarking predictions of peptide binding to MHC-I molecules. PLoS Comput Biol. 2006
Poxvirus CD8+ T-cell determinants and cross-reactivity in BALB/c mice. J Virol. 2006
A consensus epitope prediction approach identifies the breadth of murine T(CD8+)-cell responses to vaccinia virus. Nat Biotechnol. 2006
Improving MHC binding peptide prediction by incorporating binding data of auxiliary MHC molecules. Bioinformatics. 2006
Impact of HLA-B alleles, epitope binding affinity, functional
avidity, and viral coinfection on the immunodominance of virus-specific
CTL responses. J Immunol. 2006
Predicting population coverage of T-cell epitope-based diagnostics and vaccines. BMC Bioinformatics. 2006
Immunodominance of poxviral-specific CTL in a human trial of recombinant-modified vaccinia Ankara. J Immunol. 2005
Identification of paramyosin T cell epitopes associated with human resistance to Schistosoma mansoni reinfection. Clin Exp Immunol. 2005
The high frequency Indian rhesus macaque MHC class I molecule,
Mamu-B*01, does not appear to be involved in CD8+ T lymphocyte
responses to SIVmac239. J Immunol. 2005
HLA-A*0201, HLA-A*1101, and HLA-B*0702 Transgenic Mice Recognize
Numerous Poxvirus Determinants from a Wide Variety of Viral Gene
Products. J Immunol. 2005
HLA class I-restricted responses to vaccinia recognize a broad array of
proteins mainly involved in virulence and viral gene regulation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005
Broad repertoire of the CD4+ Th cell response in spontaneously
controlled hepatitis C virus infection includes dominant and highly
promiscuous epitopes. J Immunol. 2005
A computational resource for the prediction of peptide binding to Indian rhesus macaque MHC class I molecules. Vaccine. 2005
Characterization of the T-cell epitope that causes anti-GBM glomerulonephritis. Kidney Int. 2005
Tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens: a possible avenue for cancer prevention. Immunol Cell Biol. 2005
Classification of A1- and A24-supertype molecules by analysis of their MHC-peptide binding repertoires. Immunogenetics. 2005
Tolerogenic immune responses to novel T-cell epitopes from heat-shock protein 60 in juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Lancet. 2005
Cellular immune selection with hepatitis C virus persistence in humans. J Exp Med. 2005
Generating quantitative models describing the sequence specificity of biological processes with the stabilized matrix method. BMC Bioinformatics. 2003
The design and implementation of the immune epitope database and analysis resource. Immunogenetics. 2005
Automated generation and evaluation of specific MHC binding predictive tools: ARB matrix applications. Immunogenetics. 2005
Identification of multiple HLA-A*0201-restricted cruzipain and FL-160
CD8+ epitopes recognized by T cells from chronically Trypanosoma
cruzi-infected patients. Microbes Infect. 2005
A CD8+ T cell heptaepitope minigene vaccine induces protective immunity against Chlamydia pneumoniae. J Immunol. 2005
The majority of currently circulating human immunodeficiency virus type
1 clade B viruses fail to prime cytotoxic T-lymphocyte responses
against an otherwise immunodominant HLA-A2-restricted epitope:
implications for vaccine design. J Virol. 2005
Discovery and characterization of highly immunogenic and broadly recognized mimics of the HIV-1 CTL epitope Gag77-85. Eur J Immunol. 2005
A roadmap for the immunomics of category A-C pathogens. Immunity. 2005
The immune epitope database and analysis resource: from vision to blueprint. PLoS Biol. 2005
Rationally engineered therapeutic proteins with reduced immunogenicity. J Immunol. 2005
Characterization of the peptide-binding specificity of Mamu-A*11
results in the identification of SIV-derived epitopes and interspecies
cross-reactivity. Immunogenetics. 2005
Identification of poxvirus CD8+ T cell determinants to enable rational design and characterization of smallpox vaccines. J Exp Med. 2005
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