Todd Bradley, PhD

Vice Chair, Institutional Biosafety Committee; Director, Immunogenomics Program; Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Research Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Kansas School of Medicine

Full Biography

Todd Bradley, PhD, Director of Immunogenomics, Genomic Medicine Center, is receiving $1,048,667 for a study titled “Mechanisms of Early-life Immunity Associated with HIV-1 Vaccine-induced Neutralizing Antibody Responses.” The funds will come from a U01 grant award to Duke University from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The award will total $5.8 million over five years, subject to the availability of funds. 

Pediatric human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection continues to be a global health concern with over a million children across the world living with HIV-1. How pediatric immune systems respond to candidate HIV vaccines and early-life immunity are understudied areas. Dr. Bradley’s team is collaborating with Duke University School of Medicine researchers in hopes of bridging the gap in this knowledge by discovering more about the pediatric immune system in preclinical models and analyzing how it reacts to candidate HIV vaccines.

The goal of this study is to define how the neonatal immune system generates neutralizing antibodies to candidate HIV vaccines to develop a roadmap for designing optimal pediatric HIV-1 vaccines that are safe and effective. Generation of neutralizing antibodies that can block infection of various strains of HIV-1 is a crucial barrier in developing a successful HIV vaccine.

Dr. Bradley and collaborators at Duke University will deeply study the immune responses of HIV vaccine candidates in preclinical models. Researchers will apply genomics and immunological analyses of tissues during vaccination to identify key mechanisms of early-life immunity that can be used for generating long-term HIV immunity.

Dr. Bradley predicts that this work will lead to the discovery of unknown attributes of the pediatric immune system that can be utilized to improve vaccine outcomes for not only HIV but other childhood vaccines.

“By uncovering the mechanisms that allow infants to generate protective antibody responses, we hope to not only advance the design of safe and effective pediatric HIV vaccines but also optimize the effectiveness of childhood vaccines more broadly,” said Dr. Bradley. “This work will identify critical aspects of the pediatric immune system that can be harnessed for improving vaccines and immunotherapies to improve the health of children.”

For this project, Dr. Bradley is a multiple principal investigator (MPI) alongside MPIs at Duke University School of Medicine — Wilton Williams, PhD, and Justin Pollara, PhD. Co-investigators on this study include the following from the Bradley Lab in the Genomic Medicine Center: Santosh Khanal, MSc, Sr. Bioinformatics Scientist; Gage Greening, PhD, Research Associate; Eric Geanes, MS, Research Laboratory Supervisor; and Rebecca McLennan, PhD, Project Manager of Genomics Medicine.

The research described in this announcement is supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under award number U01AI192382-01 and covers a project period of Aug. 20, 2025-June 30, 2026.

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.