Claire Otero
Student

I am a PhD candidate in Pathology, studying the maternal immune factors that prevent congenital CMV. My thesis adviser is Dr. Sallie Permar, who is now the Chair of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Med. I will be a visiting graduate student at WCM starting June 2021. 

I am also currently serving as a managing editor at the Journal of Emerging Investigators, a journal that publishes work by middle and high school students.

Current Research Interests

(1) Maternal immune correlates of protection against congenital CMV infection. Investigating using a rhesus macaque model of primary infection during pregnancy. This would provide valuable information for the rational design of a CMV vaccine to target responses implicated in protection from vertical transmission.

(2) Targeting CMV viral Fc receptors via immunization as a means of improving Fc mediated antibody effector responses. Immune evasion mechanisms are a major challenge in CMV vaccine development, and the goal of this work is to determine whether targeting viral proteins known to interfere with key antibody responses will improve the overall efficacy of antibodies targeting other CMV antigens.

(3) Antibody characteristics mediating maternal antibody interference to infant rotavirus vaccination. Currently consulting on the development of a mouse model of rotavirus vaccination. 

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Contact Information

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