• M.D., Cornell University, 1985
• Ph.D., Rockefeller University, 1984
• B.A., Harvard College, 1978

Research Interests: Immune reconstitution after high dose chemotherapy and hematopoietic progenitor cell transplantation represents a significant clinical problem, as patients with poor post-transplant immunity have increased opportunistic infections and increased risk for cancer recurrence. The Waller lab focuses on developing novel strategies to enhance immunity with a focus on the interaction between dendritic cells and T-cells. Recent human clinical data and a murine model indicates that donor dendritic cells regulate post-transplant cellular immunity. On-going clinical projects include a clinical trial of vaccination post-transplantation with a focus on memory T-cell subsets and identification of DC-specific peptide sequences that may target antigens to specific DC subsets in humans. The Waller lab has explored novel strategies of adoptive cellular immunotherapy using donor lymphocyte infusions treated with fludarabine, an immunosuppressive nucleoside analogue, that reduce their GvHD potential. These studies utilize a MHC mismatched C57BL/6B10.BR mouse BMT model and clinical samples from patients treated with fludarabine. Murine recipients of fludarabine treated donor lymphocyte infusions (F-DLI) had significantly reduced GvHD mortality, reduced histopathological evidence of GvHD and lower inflammatory serum cytokine levels than recipients of untreated DLI. The results suggest that fludarabine reduces the GvHD potential of donor lymphocytes through effects on a CD4+ CD44low naive T-cell population, with less effect on alloreactive T-cells and CD4+ CD44high memory T-cells that are able to mediate GvL effects. Thus, F-DLI represents a novel method of immune modulation that may be useful to enhance immune reconstitution among allograft recipients with reduced risk of GvHD, while retaining beneficial GvL effects. Lesson learned form the setting of transplant can be applied in enhancing immune respones to vaccines and infectious diseases.