Sheila Keating, PhD
Associate Professor
Laboratory Medicine
School of Medicine

415-749-6609

For the past 20 years I have been studying clinical diagnostics, biomarkers of immunity and immunopathology, vaccines and therapeutics to infectious and chronic diseases. For the last three years I have been working on developing polyclonal antibody therapeutics for infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and protection from transplant rejection.

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I have done this by caputuring the ENTIRE antibody repertoire from vaccine recipients, convalescent donors or immunized humanized mice. These drugs are created quickly - A covid polyclonal antibody therapeutic was made in 3 months from the receipt of donor specimens, and this therapeutic contains over 12,500 unique and COVID-specific antibodies - providing diverse neutralizing antibodies that will be resistant to viral evasion. We are looking forward to developing the next drugs for the next difficult to treat disease requiring a multi-specific poly-valent antibody therapeutic. My research has been diverse, as the Director of the Core Immunology Laboratory, I focused on biomarker discovery using low volume, high throughput immune assays to measure cytokines, chemokines, growth factors and other biomarkers of immune response or pathology in a number of studies ranging from HIV, HCV, HBV vaccine breakthrough, Chagas, West Nile Virus, cardiovascular disease, neuropathology and many other areas. Discovering biomarkers of infection enables understanding of detection of infection, protection from pathology, and development of therapeutics that will prevent disease.

Awards

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  • Young Investigator, CHAVI, 2011
  • Women and HIV Junior Scholar Award, CFAR, 2010
  • Dorothy Price Medal for Immunology, National University Ireland, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland, 2005

Education & Training

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  • Postdoctoral Fellow Immunobiology Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK 2007
  • PhD Vaccine Immunology WIMM/Oxford University, Open University, Centre for Vaccinology and Tropical Med 2006
  • MSPH Tropical Medicine Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA 1998
  • BA Biology College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 1995

Interests

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  • HIV Cure
  • cytokines
  • hyperimmune
  • induction
  • cancer immunology
  • diagnostics
  • humoral immunity
  • Chagas
  • vaccines
  • HCV
  • public health
  • HBV
  • immune deficiency
  • infectious diseases
  • transplant
  • bacteria
  • biomarkers
  • Antibody
  • malaria
  • memory immune responses
  • virus
  • therapeutics
  • cellular immunology
  • cross-sectional HIV incidence
  • HCV elimination
  • HIV associated neurocognitive dysfunction (HAND)
  • immunotherapy
  • HIV
  • polyclonal
  • Trypanosoma cruzi
  • emerging pathogens
  • HIV co-morbidity

Websites

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Publications (126)

Top publication keywords:
Serologic TestsGlobulinsHIV-1Chagas CardiomyopathyHIV InfectionsAntiretroviral Therapy, Highly ActiveLaboratory Proficiency TestingBlood PreservationViral LoadMalaria VaccinesHIV AntigensHIV AntibodiesCytokinesChemokinesBlood Donors

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