Jiri Mestecky
University of Alabama at Birmingham
USA
Jiri Mestecky, M, PhD, is a professor of Microbiology and Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, U.S. A. He obtained his medical degree from Charles University in Prague and PhD from the Czech Academy of Sciences.
He has worked on the induction of humoral and cellular immune responses in mucosal and systemic compartments against bacterial and viral antigens and vaccines including influenza, Epstein-Barr, human or simian immunodeficiency viruses, and streptococci using mucosal or systemic vaccine route administration and various antigen delivery systems. Furthermore, his co-workers demonstrated in humans the induction of mucosal tolerance manifested by the systemic unresponsiveness of T cells in the presence of mucosal and systemic antibody responses. The most recent studies include the role of Epstein-Barr virus infection in the development of a common human autoimmune disease – IgA nephropathy – with marked age, socio-economic and racial differences in the disease incidence.
