Scholars@Duke
Brandi Tranae’ Johnson-Weaver

Brandi Tranae’ Johnson-Weaver

Medical Instructor in the Department of Pathology
Pathology
brandi.t.johnson@duke.edu
Box 3712, 346 Davison Building, Durham, NC 27710
40 Medicine Circle, 346 Davison Building, Durham, NC 27710

Selected Publications

A two-dose regimen of Qβ virus-like particle-based vaccines elicit protective antibodies against heroin and fentanyl.

Journal Article bioRxiv · August 29, 2024 Opioid overdoses and the growing rate of opioid use disorder (OUD) are major public health concerns, particularly in the United States. Current treatment approaches for OUD have failed to slow the growth of the opioid crisis. Opioid vaccines have shown pre ... Full text Link to item Cite

Preclinical evaluation of alternatives to oral immunotherapy for food allergies

Journal Article Frontiers in Allergy · October 3, 2023 The increasing food allergy incidence has led to significant interest in developing therapies for allergic diseases. Oral allergen-specific immunotherapy (OIT) is a recently FDA-approved therapeutic to treat peanut allergies. OIT utilizes daily all ... Full text Cite

Delivery of small molecule mast cell activators for West Nile Virus vaccination using acetalated dextran microparticles.

Journal Article Int J Pharm · March 5, 2023 Recently, there has been increasing interest in the activation of mast cells to promote vaccine efficacy. Several mast cell activating (MCA) compounds have been reported such as M7 and Compound 48/80 (C48/80). While these MCAs have been proven to be effica ... Full text Link to item Cite

Nasal Immunization With Small Molecule Mast Cell Activators Enhance Immunity to Co-Administered Subunit Immunogens.

Journal Article Front Immunol · 2021 Mast cell activators are a novel class of mucosal vaccine adjuvants. The polymeric compound, Compound 48/80 (C48/80), and cationic peptide, Mastoparan 7 (M7) are mast cell activators that provide adjuvant activity when administered by the nasal route. Howe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Innate Immunity based Mucosal Modulators and Adjuvants

Chapter · 2020 The development of mucosally administered vaccines remains a goal of many researchers who desire to develop a needle-free method of immunization that can induce antigen-specific immune responses in both systemic and mucosal tissues. The coadministration of ... Full text Link to item Cite

Innate Immunity-Based Mucosal Modulators and Adjuvants

Chapter · September 15, 2019 The development of mucosally administered vaccines remains a goal of many researchers who desire to develop a needle-free method of immunization that can induce antigen-specific immune responses in both systemic and mucosal tissues. The coadministration of ... Link to item Cite

Mast Cells For the Control of Mucosal Immunity

Chapter · September 15, 2019 Mast cells (MCs) are gaining recognition as key initiators and coordinators of host inflammatory and immune responses to various microbial pathogens. Their presence in mucosal tissues and skin make them one of the first immune cells to make contact with in ... Link to item Cite

Optimized Mucosal Modified Vaccinia Virus Ankara Prime/Soluble gp120 Boost HIV Vaccination Regimen Induces Antibody Responses Similar to Those of an Intramuscular Regimen.

Journal Article J Virol · July 15, 2019 The benefits of mucosal vaccines over injected vaccines are difficult to ascertain, since mucosally administered vaccines often induce serum antibody responses of lower magnitude than those induced by injected vaccines. This study aimed to determine if muc ... Full text Link to item Cite

Effect of endotoxin and alum adjuvant vaccine on peanut allergy.

Journal Article J Allergy Clin Immunol · February 2018 Full text Link to item Cite

Serological response following re-vaccination with Salmonella typhi Vi-capsular polysaccharide vaccines in healthy adult travellers.

Journal Article Vaccine · August 7, 2015 An injectable Vi-capsular polysaccharide vaccine against typhoid fever is available but vaccine-induced immunity tends to wane over time. The phenomenon of immunotolerance or hyporesponsiveness has earlier been described for polysaccharide vaccines such as ... Full text Link to item Cite

A comparison of non-toxin vaccine adjuvants for their ability to enhance the immunogenicity of nasally-administered anthrax recombinant protective antigen.

Journal Article Vaccine · March 1, 2013 Development of nasal immunization for human use is hindered by the lack of acceptable adjuvants. Although CT is an effective adjuvant, its toxicity will likely prevent its use in nasal vaccines. This study compared non-toxin adjuvants to CT for their abili ... Full text Link to item Cite

Maximal adjuvant activity of nasally delivered IL-1α requires adjuvant-responsive CD11c(+) cells and does not correlate with adjuvant-induced in vivo cytokine production.

Journal Article J Immunol · March 15, 2012 IL-1 has been shown to have strong mucosal adjuvant activities, but little is known about its mechanism of action. We vaccinated IL-1R1 bone marrow (BM) chimeric mice to determine whether IL-1R1 expression on stromal cells or hematopoietic cells was suffic ... Full text Link to item Cite