McNamara Ryan P

My research focuses on how the immune system is shaped after vaccination and/or infection at the antibody level. Antibodies are able to coordinate antigen binding with functions such as neutralization, phagocytosis, complement deposition, cytokine and inflammatory signaling, etc. In the field of infectious diseases, neutralizing antibodies have historically been studied as a primary correlate of protection; however non-neutralizing functions of antibodies have been shown to play an instrumental, if not more clinically relevant, role in pathogen control and disease mitigation. Therefore, an understanding of how antibodies leverage non-neutralizing functions can lead to the development of next-generation antibody-based therapeutics and rational vaccine design.