Professional Bio
Scott Smith, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is a physician-scientist who is also trained as an adult infectious diseases clinical specialist with over 20 years experience in the area of viral pathogenesis and immunity.
Dr. Smith's initial training gave him a broad understanding of poxvirus immunovirology, and of the biology of xenotransplantation, which principally involves the innate immune system. His more recent work, which forms the basis of the science in his laboratory, is focused on generation and study of naturally occurring human monoclonal antibodies. He developed a highly efficient method to produce human hybridomas from peripheral blood B cells.
This technology was developed for the specific purpose of studying the human antibody response to viral infections, and to use the information obtained regarding their epitope targets to assist in the rational design of vaccines. While performing these studies, Dr. Smith recognized that this technology could be taken across scientific fields to allow for the very first time the study of naturally occurring human allergen and parasite-specific IgE antibody responses - the adaptive targeting molecule that orchestrates a very different branch of the human immune system. He acknowledges the many parallels that can be drawn between the infectious diseases antibody fields and this new area of focus. Natural human monoclonal IgG, IgM, and IgA have been studied for many decades. All of the knowledge and techniques used can now be applied to studies of the pathological and potentially protective human antibody response to innocuous allergens and parasitic infections to aide in the development of parasite vaccines and new allergy diagnostics and therapeutics.
The studies in Dr. Smith's laboratory make use of these many skills to generate human IgE antibodies targeting major allergens and assist in structure-based design of hypoallergenic mutants for future use in immunotherapy.
Relevant Links
Publications
Education
Fellowship - ID - Vanderbilt University
PhD - University of Louisville, 2001
PhD - Microbiology & Immunology - University of Louisville, 2002
MD - University of Louisville, 2006
Residency - ID - Vanderbilt University, 2008
Fellowship - ID - Vanderbilt University, 2011
Contact
Email
Kimryn.Rathmell@Vumc.Org
Address
777 Preston Research Building
2220 Pierce Ave
Nashville, TN 37232-6307