Lab Members

Philip Felgner, Ph.D.

Director
pfelgner@uci.edu

Website
Publications

Dr. Felgner is Director of the UCI Vaccine Research and Development Center and the Protein Microarray Laboratory and Training Facility. The goal of his current research is to identify the right antigens to use for vaccines. The Laboratory developed a high throughput approach to clone and express all proteins encoded in a microorganism’s genomic DNA and print them onto protein microarrays. The Lab has cloned 70,000 genes derived from 35 infectious microorganisms, expressed and printed the encoded proteins on microarrays and probed with an inventory of more than 25,000 sera from infected, vaccinated, and healthy people worldwide to identify serodiagnostic and vaccine antigens.Dr. Felgner joined the faculty at UC Irvine in 2002 after two decades of experience in the biotechnology industry, including founding Vical Inc. in San Diego based on his discovery of DNA vaccines and serving as Chief Scientific Officer to help build the company into a publicly traded entity. He discovered and developed ‘Lipofection’ DNA transfection technology in 1985, the most widely used approach for introducing nucleic acid into cultured cells. His work has led to 200 published papers and 45 patents that have been cited by other scientists more than 33,000 times, and founding of a UCI startup company Antigen Discovery Inc.

David Huw Davies, Ph.D.

Project Scientist
ddavies@uci.edu

Publications

Dr. Davies is an immunologist with a special interest in vaccine development. He earned his Ph.D. at University College London’s Zoology Department, where Michael Abercrombie pioneered the study cell motility using techniques such as time-lapse cinematography. There, he studied the motility of insect blood cells (hemocytes), which started him on the path to immunology. His first post-doc was with Brad Vinson at Texas A&M University where he studied cellular defense system of insects and a form of immune suppression caused by polydnaviruses. These viruses are carried by some parasitoid wasps which inject them with their eggs into caterpillars. His main discovery was that these viruses interfered with the motile and adhesive behavior of hemocytes and helped suppress the immune system in the parasitized host. In 1998 he returned to UCL to study the immunology of human papillomaviruses with Benny Chain in Avrion Mitchison’s ICRF Tumor Immunology Group, where he learned how to induce and measure T cell responses using synthetic peptides. He joined the faculty at King’s College London in 1991 where he continued to research T cell responses to HPV. One discovery was the utility of recently-discovered class I MHC-binding motifs for predicting peptides that could be used in T cell recall assays to measure exposure to HPV. During this time, he taught immunology at bachelors and masters levels, mentored over 10 Ph.D. students, and wrote a couple of immunology textbooks. He joined UCI in 2003 to learn proteomic approaches to vaccine antigen discovery. With Philip Felgner and Xiaowu Liang, he helped develop a proteome microarray platform using vaccinia virus as the model pathogen. This platform is still widely used for the discovery of candidate serodiagnostic and vaccine antigens for many pathogens. He has since mapped reactive antibody profiles in several pathogens, including Plasmodium falciparum and vivax, Toxoplasma gondii, Francisella tularensis, and Salmonella Typhi, as well as viruses, including poxviruses and influenza. His main focus at the moment is the development of non-reactogenic alternative vaccines against Q fever, and a method for engendering cross-reactive antibodies to multiple antigen variants in a single-shot nanoparticle-based vaccine.

Li Liang, Ph.D.

Project Scientist
lliang3@uci.edu

Publications

Dr. Liang received her Ph.D. degree in Microbiology and Molecular Virology from Cornell University. She then joined Dr. Bernard Roizman’s (National Academy Member) Viral Oncology lab at University of Chicago to continue her research on Herpesviruses replication and gene therapy and published several peer-reviewed papers on this topic.For the past ten years, she has been studying antibody responses to various infectious diseases using high-throughput protein microarray approach. Her current research focuses on immune responses following infectious disease challenges, especially as they relate to the discovery and development of vaccines and improved diagnostics, through an established collaborative effort with researchers from different universities all over the world. Dr. Liang has been a PI on several subcontract grants, managed numerous projects, and been a leader in developing protein microarrays on a genome-wide scale and characterized antibody responses against different bacterial/viral/parasital pathogens, including Salmonella enterica Typhi, Toxoplasma gondii, Brucella melitensis, Shigella, Clostridium difficile, Orientia tsutsugamushi, Vibrio cholera, Schistosoma, Hookworm, Leptospira interrogans, Rickettsia typhi, Coxiella burnetii, Trypanosomasis cruzi, Cytauxzoon felis, Plasmodium falciparum and vivax, Bartonella henslae, Herpesviruses, Flaviviruses, etc. This systems biology approach provides an empirical basis for understanding the breadth and specificity of the immune response to infectious organisms. She has developed a computational model of proteomic features that predict whether a protein is antigenic and produces antibodies that are serodiagnostic or confer protection. She has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers using the microarray technology.

Rie Nakajima, M.Sc.

Lab Manager
rie3@uci.edu

Publications

Ms. Nakajima is a manager of Protein Microarray Laboratory and is a member of protein microarray fabrication team. Her expertise includes cloning of infectious diseases agents, plasmid bank preparation and its maintenance, manufacture of protein microarrays, as well as developing various immunoassays, including immunostrips, ELISA, and lateral flow for diagnostic applications and vaccine development research. In addition, she is responsible for maintenance of sera bank, cloned plasmid collections, infectious disease purified antigens database, and protocols, as well as other administrative duties in the laboratory. She is also in charge of microarray workshops.

Algis Jasinskas, Ph.D.

Project Scientist
ajasinsk@uci.edu

Dr. Jasinskas is a Cellular and Molecular Biology specialist with experience in gene expression, genome structure, and infectious diseases. He received his BS degree in Chemistry from Vilnius State University and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Molecular Biology Institute in Kiev. In 1995 he joined the University of California Irvine where he participated in several projects, such as gene expression regulation, molecular organization of chromosomes and infectious disease transmission mechanisms. At present, his interests are the discovery of serodiagnostic antigens and vaccine candidates of various infectious diseases using protein microarrays platform. He also is in charge of managing the protein microarray facility at University of California Irvine Vaccine Center.

Jiin Felgner, MS-MPH

Visiting Scientist
felgnerj@uci.edu

Publications

Ms. Jiin Felgner is a pharmaceutical scientist specializing in the development of drug products for human clinical use and life-science products for researcher use. She received her BS degree from Pharmacy School of National Taiwan University in 1973 and soon became a certified pharmacist. She further received her MPH degree from the Public Health School of National Taiwan University in 1975, and MS degree from Biochemistry graduate school the University of California, Davis in 1978 to broaden her training.Throughout her long productive career in the biopharmaceutical industry, she has worked in big pharmaceutical companies (including Syntex, Genentech, and TEVA) and startup biotech companies (including Vical, Gene Therapy Systems, and Antigen Discovery Inc). She has successfully developed many pharmaceutical products for human clinical use as a principal scientist or a team lead. The chemical entity of these products ranged from small synthetic molecules, peptides, to large recombinant proteins and plasmid DNA; dosage forms ranged from a liquid, lyophilized, to a complex emulsion, liposome, and suspension. Many of them have been approved by FDA, e.g. Human Gamma Interferon, Tissue Plasminogen Activator, LHRH decapeptide analog, and 15 generic drug products. In addition, she has developed many lines of research products for life science researcher use, including transfection reagents, protein microarrays, ELISA kits, Immunostrips, cloning vector, and competent cells.

She joined UCI as a visiting formulation scientist in 2016, the focus of her research is to develop a biomimetic virus-like particle (VLP) subunit vaccine platform consisting liposomes, emulsions, and polymeric microspheres that can induce a durable immune response after a single injection and prevents infection for at least 1 year.

Rafael Ramiro de Assis, Ph.D.

Project Scientist
rramirod@hs.uci.edu

Dr. Assis is a Cellular and Molecular Biologist specialist in cellular biology, immunology and molecular biology. He obtained his Ph.D. in health sciences from Fiocruz, Brazil, where he worked with the immunological aspects of parasite/host interaction of Leishmaniasis. Later, during his postdoc, he started working with high throughput technologies to study the genetic and the immunological aspects of parasitic diseases such as schistosomiasis as well as the search for novel antigens for differential diagnosis of arboviral outbreaks such as Zika, Dengue and Yellow Fever.

Aarti Jain, M.Sc.

Associate Specialist
aartij@uci.edu

Publications

Aarti Jain is an Associate Specialist in Dr. Felgner’s lab. She obtained her MSc in Biology, Biochemistry and a M.Ed in Education from India. Prior to working at UCI, she worked as researcher at Quest Diagonostics, Purdue, and Allergan. Before joining Dr. Felgner’s team, she was in UCI’s Department of Radiation Oncology for 10 years. She is currently a part of the VRDC’s protein microarray team, which works on protein microarray chip production and antibody profiling for the discovery of serodiagnostic and vaccine candidate for different infectious diseases such as Malaria, Influenza, Coxiella brunetii, HIV, Bartonella Henselae , Orientia tsutsugamushi, Leptospira, Clostridium difficile, Cholera, etc. Her duties at the VRDC includes protein microarrays hybridization, quantification, analysis and performing various immunoassays, including immunostrips and ELISA. In addition, she is responsible for managing international projects and conducting protein microarray workshops for visiting scholars.

Jenny Davies, Ph.D.

Project Scientist
jdavies2@uci.edu

Dr. Jenny Hernandez-Davies received her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Pathology from UCLA. Her graduate post-doctoral research involves the identification and testing of drug targets and candidates for the treatment of a variety of cancers including Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), Melanoma, and Neuroblastoma. Her current research involves working on the development of nanoparticle vaccines to target a variety of microbial pathogens including Influenza and Ebola virus. Her specialty involves in vivo studies using mouse models of disease and virology work to establish both in vivo and in vitro efficacy studies.