About the Lab:

Dr. Scott’s research is directed towards understanding the development, regulation and maintenance of protective and pathologic CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in order to design new vaccines and immunotherapies for infectious diseases, focusing primarily cutaneous leishmaniasis. The laboratory integrates results from studies in experimental murine models and those done in patients in Brazil, which allows the laboratory to develop hypotheses from human studies and test those hypotheses by doing mechanistic studies in mice. Currently, the Scott laboratory focuses in three main areas: 1) defining the role of CD8+ T cells in mediating increased pathology and using that information to develop immunotherapies to accelerate healing in cutaneous leishmaniasis patients; 2) defining how dermal CD4+ T resident memory cells develop and are maintained in order to target them in a vaccine; and 3) understanding the role of the skin microbiome in regulating the immune response to leishmaniasis.

Training Information:

Dr. Scott is very involved in graduate programs at Penn, both in our Immunology Graduate Group (IGG), and the Microbiology, Virology and Parasitology (MVP) Graduate Group. He teaches graduate level courses in both IGG and MVP, has been on the admissions committee for IGG, thesis committees for both graduate groups, chaired the preliminary exam committee, and supervised more than 45 undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students. His former trainees have gone on to productive careers as scientists in academia, the NIH, and industry, and many are now faculty and universities across the US.

Current and Former T32 Trainees:

Former:

Christina Go, PhD