Mark M. Davis

Administrative Appointments

• The Burt and Marion Avery Family Professor of Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine (2007 - present)
• Director, Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, Stanford University School of Medicine (2004 - present)
• Chair, Stanford University School of Medicine - Microbiology & Immunology (2002 - 2004)

Honors and Awards

• Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize, Caltech (1981)
• Passano Young Scientist Award, Passano Foundation (1985)
• Eli Lilly Award in Microbiology and Immunology, American Society of Microbiology (1986)
• Howard Taylor Ricketts Award, University of Chicago (1988)
• Gairdner Prize, Gairdner Foundation (1989)

Professional Education

Postdoctoral Advisees

Peter Ebert, David Furman, Ofir Goldberger, Jun Huang, Evan Newell, Fleur Tynan, Jianming Xie

Graduate & Fellowship Program Affiliations

• Biophysics
• Immunology
• Microbiology and Immunology

Web Site Links

• http://cmgm.stanford.edu/hhmi/mdavis

Industry Relationships

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Research Interests

We are interested in the molecular basis of T and B lymphocyte recognition, as well as the control of differentiation and functional responses in these cells. In particular, we have studied the biochemical basis of T cell receptor binding to antigen/MHC complexes and find that the strength of the interactions is a very good predictor of what the resulting T cell response will be. We also find that T cell receptor-peptide/ MHC complexes have an inherent ability to form oligomers and that this could be part of the ‘trigger’ for T cell activation. One spin-off of these biochemical studies has been the development of tetrameric peptide/MHC reagents which have proven to be generally useful for staining and characterizing antigen-specific T cells in complex mixtures of lymphocytes (i.e. McMichael and Callaghan, J. Exp. Med., 187:1367-1371, 1998). Among other things, we have used these tetramers to follow tumor specific T cells in patients with Melanoma and other cancers. In one patient where we see a substantial number of CD8+ T cells specific for a tumor antigen, the cells have no cytolytic activity and thus seem to have been ‘anergized’ by the tumor. We are now working with a number of groups that have developed different vaccination strategies to determine which strategies are best able to produce a useful response.

Another important aspect of T cell recognition that is something of a ‘black box’ is the mystery of what actually happens on the surface of T cell while it is surveying an antigen presenting cell. To investigate this we have made a large series of green fluorescent protein tagged cell surface molecules, expressed them in B or T lymphocytes and followed their movements using multi-color video microscopy. Thus far we find that many key molecules (ICAM-1, CD48, class II, MHC) on the B cell cluster to the interface with a T cell within seconds after the first rise in internal calcium (in the T cell) and the corresponding movement of complimentary membrane...

Publications

• Simultaneous detection of many T-cell specificities using combinatorial tetramer staining. Newell EW, Klein LO, Yu W, Davis MM. Nat Methods. 2009; 6 (7): 497-9
• An endogenous positively selecting peptide enhances mature T cell responses and becomes an autoantigen in the absence of microRNA miR-181a. Ebert PJ, Jiang S, Xie J, Li QJ, Davis MM. Nat Immunol. 2009; 10 (11): 1162-9
• Towards a cytokine-cell interaction knowledgebase of the adaptive immune system. Shen-Orr SS, Goldberger O, Garten Y, Rosenberg-Hasson Y, Lovelace PA, Hirschberg DL, Altman RB, Davis MM, Butte AJ. Pac Symp Biocomput. 2009: 439-50
• Thymic selection determines gammadelta T cell effector fate: antigen-naive cells make interleukin-17 and antigen-experienced cells make interferon gamma. Jensen KD, Su X, Shin S, Li L, Youssef S, Yamasaki S, Steinman L, Saito T, Locksley RM, Davis MM, Baumgarth N, Chien YH. Immunity. 2008; 29 (1): 90-100
• Immunosuppressive therapy mitigates immunological rejection of human embryonic stem cell xenografts. Swijnenburg RJ, Schrepfer S, Govaert JA, Cao F, Ransohoff K, Sheikh AY, Haddad M, Connolly AJ, Davis MM, Robbins RC, Wu JC. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008; 105 (35): 12991-6