Shelby L. O'Connor, PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Dr. Shelby O’Connor is interested in understanding host immune responses to SIV and the effect that a pre-existing SIV-infection has on host immunity to other pathogens. Her laboratory uses nonhuman primates with defined host MHC genetics to understand key factors of immunity against SIV, a virus closely related to HIV. They tests whether specific interventions, such as immunomodulatory agents or vaccine candidates, can boost host immunity against SIV or towards other pathogens, such as M. tuberculosis.  To improve antiviral immunity, her lab has detected remarkable virus control upon treatment with an effective IL-15 superagonist.  They have also been working with their collaborators to develop an SIV/M.tuberculosis co-infection model to define how immunodeficiency virus infection increases the susceptibility to tuberculosis disease. Dr. O’Connor recently graduated her first PhD student, and he went on to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the NIH Vaccine Research Center. Dr. O’Connor collaborates with Drs. Evans, Friedrich, D. O’Connor, and Reynolds.