Hong Xin MD, PhD
Associate Professor,
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology and
Department of Pediatrics
LSUHSC
CSRB 6263
533 Bolivar St.,
New Orleans, LA 70112-1393
Phone: (504) 568-8121
hxin@lsuhsc.edu
Degrees
MD - 1996
Capital University of Medical Sciences, Beijing, P.R.China,
PhD - 2003
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, LSU Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, LA
Bio
Dr. Xin graduated from Capital University of Medical Sciences in Beijing. She have a broad background in clinical medicine as an M.D., as well as received extensive training in Biochemistry during her Ph.D. program at LSUHSC.
Research Interests
Research interests of Dr. Xin's lab are focused on (i) Development of anti-Candida vaccine against disseminated candidiasis caused by all the Candida species of medical significance. (ii) To develop combination therapy with monoclonal antibody (mAb) cocktails for disseminated candidiasis. (iii) To determine the protective efficacy of vaccines and therapeutic mAb cocktails in neutropenic mouse model of disseminated candidiasis. (iv) To investigate the protective mechanisms of the protective peptide-specific mAbs.
Hematogenously disseminated candidiasis in humans has become the third leading cause
of hospital-acquired blood stream infections and despite antifungal therapy at least
40% of affected individuals will die of this disease. As there is no approved antifungal
vaccine for use in humans and significant therapeutic challenges remain, our approach
is disease prevention through active vaccination and/or passive immunization with
protective antibodies. We defined six T-cell peptides found in Candida albicans cell wall proteins and conjugated each peptide, originally intended to act as a carrier
to the fungal cell wall β-1,2- trisaccharide [β-(Man)3] to create glycopeptide conjugate vaccines.
Three of the peptide carriers also turned out to be excellent vaccines by themselves
in that they induced protection against candidiasis. Then, another breakthrough is
that the addition of tetanus toxoid to glycopeptide conjugate resulted in a glycopeptide-TT vaccine induced dual (double) antibody-dependent protective immunity without the need
for adjuvant, which is feasible for human use. We continually demonstrated a novel
double chimeric peptide vaccine that functions synergistically to improve the level
of protection against disseminated candidiasis. Furthermore, a combination cocktail
of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) specific for the synthetic peptides of the double
chimeric vaccine provided the most effective protection against disseminated candidiasis.
Our research goal is to further develop the first “universal” multi-epitope vaccine
protects against all the medically significant Candida species in addition to C. albicans, as well as address the fundamental question concerning vaccine induced immunity in
high-risk immunocompromised populations.
Selected Publications
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