Spyros Kalams, MD, is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is the Director of the Laboratory Sciences Core of the Tennessee Center for AIDS Research and he is the Principal investigator of the Vanderbilt HIV Vaccine Trials Clinical Research Site (VV-CRS), which tests candidate HIV vaccines in phase 1-3 trials. The VV-CRS is now part of the Coronavirus Vaccine Prevention Network and performs clinical trials of SARS CoV-2 vaccine candidates.
The Kalams laboratory studies cellular immune responses to intracellular pathogens such as viruses and mycobacteria, and vaccines for influenza, HIV, and SARS CoV-2. Current active projects include 1) Determining the correlates of immune control of latent tuberculosis infection by longitudinally studying a cohort of individuals in Brazil 2) Understanding T and B cell populations that predict the ability of immune compromised individuals to respond to influenza vaccination in large clinical trials. Current trials under evaluation include pediatric stem cell, adult stem cell, adult solid organ transplant (non-lung), and adult lung transplant recipients. 3) Characterization of cellular immune responses to HIV infection and to HIV vaccines 4) Evaluation of cellular immune responses to SARS CoV-2 infection and vaccines and 5) Determining why adults have diminishing influenza vaccine responses with age.
His laboratory uses bioinformatics techniques to analyze T and B cell phenotypes by fluorescence and mass cytometry, the transcriptomic profile, and T cell receptor usage of pathogen and vaccine responses at the single cell level.