Systems Vaccinology

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• Dr. Bali Pulendran, Violetta L. Horton Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Director of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection, and the Departments of Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology.
• Tuesday 29 July 2025, 11:00-12:00
• Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ruth Paton.

This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Tuesday 29 July 2025, starting at 11:00am, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)

Speaker: Dr. Bali Pulendran, Violetta L. Horton Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Director of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection, Departments of Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology.

Title: Systems Vaccinology

Abstract: Although the development of effective vaccines has saved countless lives from infectious diseases, the basic workings of the human immune system are complex and have required the development of animal models, such as inbred mice, to define mechanisms of immunity. However, past results are not necessarily a reliable guide to the future, and a notable limitation of animal models has been their failure to accurately model some human diseases and their inability to predict human immune responses in many cases. In the past decade there has been an explosion of new approaches and technologies to explore the human immune system with unprecedented precision. Insights into the human immune response to vaccination, cancers, and viral infections such as COVID -19 have come from high-throughput “omics” technologies that measure the behavior of genes, mRNA, proteins, metabolites, cells, and epigenetic modifications, coupled with computational approaches. I will discuss how these “Systems Vaccinology” approaches are advancing our mechanistic understanding of the human system and its response to vaccines and infections and facilitating the development of vaccines against HIV , malaria and other infectious diseases.

Short Bio: Bali Pulendran is the Violetta L. Horton Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Director of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation, and Infection, at Stanford University. He received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University, and his Ph.D., from the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, under the supervision of Sir Gustav Nossal. He then did his post-doctoral work at Immunex Corporation in Seattle.

Dr. Pulendran has had a transformative impact on human immunology and vaccinology by pioneering the use of systems approaches to probe immunity to vaccination and infection in humans. In addition, Dr. Pulendran discovered that dendritic cells, one of the key cell types orchestrating the immune response, consist of multiple subtypes, which are functionally distinct. He also discovered the mechanisms by which microbial stimuli program DCs to modulate T-helper responses and helped establish Flt3-Ligand as the key growth factor for DCs in vivo. These groundbreaking findings helped define major paradigms in innate immunity.

Dr. Pulendran’s research is published in front line journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Medicine, and Nature Immunology. Dr. Pulendran serves on many advisory boards including that of Keystone Symposia and on the External Immunology Network of GSK . He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the recipient of several honors and awards, including two concurrent MERIT awards from the NIH , the AAI Ralph Steinman Award for Human Immunology, the Albert Levy Prize, the ViE Award for the Best Research Team at the World Vaccine Congress, and is listed on Thomson Reuter’s list of Highly Cited Researchers, which recognizes the world’s most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations.

Host: Teichmann Research Group, Cambridge Stem Cell Institute & Department of Medicine

This talk is part of the Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cambridge Immunology
• Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series
• Cambridge Infectious Disease
• Cambridge Infectious Diseases
• LMB
• Liam

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