Mark Davis

Mark M. Davis, PhD, Burt and Marion Avery Family Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology; Director, Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, Stanford University School of Medicine

Research Description: Dr. Davis has a longstanding interest in lymphocyte recognition and human immune responses. His group identified elements of the T-cell receptor (TCR) and showed the immunoglobulin-like yet distinct character of the TCR. Together with parallel work on the proteins using clonotypic antibodies, this laid the modern foundation for the many subsequent studies of T cell recognition. His group also developed the peptide-MHC tetramer technique, a gold-standard in the field of immunology and diabetes research. Recently his group has refined and optimized the tetramer technology to understand better how a standard vaccine works. They have also found a surprising complexity of immune responses using emerging CyTOF technology and used it to survey over 100 different tetramers simultaneously. They have also shown that negative selection is not an efficient mechanism of T cell tolerance, and that non-heritable factors, such as virus infections are the dominant influence on immune variables in studies of twins. As director of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection (ITI), Dr. Davis oversees multiple research projects and efforts directly focused on diabetes research, including studies by over 20 members of SDRC (a subset of investigators with whom he has published studies is listed below). Dr. Davis and the Stanford ITI developed and support the Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC) in conjunction with the Center for Clinical Immunology. The Diabetes Immune Monitoring Core in SDRC is run in the HIMC. 

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Lee B, Adamska JZ, Namkoong H, Bellin MD, Wilhelm J, Szot GL, Louis DM, Davis MM, Pandol SJ, Habtezion A. Distinct immune characteristics distinguish hereditary and idiopathic chronic pancreatitis. J Clin Invest. 2020 May 1;130(5):2705-2711. doi: 10.1172/JCI134066. PMID: 32053120; PMCID: PMC7190911. 

  2. Leipold MD, Obermoser G, Fenwick C, Kleinstuber K, Rashidi N, McNevin JP, Nau AN, Wagar LE, Rozot V, Davis MM, DeRosa S, Pantaleo G, Scriba TJ, Walker BD, Olsen LR, Maecker HT. Comparison of CyTOF assays across sites: Results of a six-center pilot study. J Immunol Methods. 2018 Feb;453:37-43. doi: 10.1016/j.jim.2017.11.008. PMID: 29174717; PMCID: PMC5805584. 

  3. Alcántara-Hernández M, Leylek R, Wagar LE, Engleman EG, Keler T, Marinkovich MP, Davis MM, Nolan GP, Idoyaga J. High-Dimensional Phenotypic Mapping of Human Dendritic Cells Reveals Interindividual Variation and Tissue Specialization. Immunity. 2017 Dec 19;47(6):1037-1050.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2017.11.001. PMID: 29221729; PMCID: PMC5738280.  

  4. Lee B, Namkoong H, Yang Y, Huang H, Heller D, Szot GL, Davis MM, Husain SZ, Pandol SJ, Bellin MD, Habtezion A. Single-cell sequencing unveils distinct immune microenvironments with CCR6-CCL20 crosstalk in human chronic pancreatitis. Gut. 2021 Oct 26:gutjnl-2021-324546. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2021-324546. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34702715. 

  5. Chen PP, Cepika AM, Agarwal-Hashmi R, Saini G, Uyeda MJ, Louis DM, Cieniewicz B, Narula M, Amaya Hernandez LC, Harre N, Xu L, Thomas BC, Ji X, Shiraz P, Tate KM, Margittai D, Bhatia N, Meyer E, Bertaina A, Davis MM, Bacchetta R, Roncarolo MG. Alloantigen-specific type 1 regulatory T cells suppress through CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways and persist long-term in patients. Sci Transl Med. 2021 Oct 27;13(617):eabf5264. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abf5264. Epub 2021 Oct 27. PMID: 34705520. 

  6. Sayed N, Huang Y, Nguyen K, Krejciova-Rajaniemi Z, Grawe AP, Gao T, Tibshirani R, Hastie T, Alpert A, Cui L, Kuznetsova T, Rosenberg-Hasson Y, Ostan R, Monti D, Lehallier B, Shen-Orr SS, Maecker HT, Dekker CL, Wyss-Coray T, Franceschi C, Jojic V, Haddad F, Montoya JG, Wu JC, Davis MM, Furman D. An inflammatory aging clock (iAge) based on deep learning tracks multimorbidity, immunosenescence, frailty and cardiovascular aging. Nat Aging. 2021 Jul;1:598-615. doi: 10.1038/s43587-021-00082-y. Epub 2021 Jul 12. PMID: 34888528; PMCID: PMC8654267. 

  7. Higdon LE, Schaffert S, Cohen RH, Montez-Rath ME, Lucia M, Saligrama N, Margulies KB, Martinez OM, Tan JC, Davis MM, Khatri P, Maltzman JS. Functional Consequences of Memory Inflation after Solid Organ Transplantation. J Immunol. 2021 Oct 15;207(8):2086-2095. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.2100405. Epub 2021 Sep 22. PMID: 34551963; PMCID: PMC8492533. 

  8. Higdon LE, Schaffert S, Huang H, Montez-Rath ME, Lucia M, Jha A, Saligrama N, Margulies KB, Martinez OM, Davis MM, Khatri P, Maltzman JS. Evolution of Cytomegalovirus-Responsive T Cell Clonality following Solid Organ Transplantation. J Immunol. 2021 Oct 15;207(8):2077-2085. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.2100404. Epub 2021 Sep 22. PMID: 34551964; PMCID: PMC8492537. 

  9. Li J, Zaslavsky M, Su Y, Guo J, Sikora MJ, van Unen V, Christophersen A, Chiou SH, Chen L, Li J, Ji X, Wilhelmy J, McSween AM, Palanski BA, Mallajosyula VVA, Bracey NA, Dhondalay GKR, Bhamidipati K, Pai J, Kipp LB, Dunn JE, Hauser SL, Oksenberg JR, Satpathy AT, Robinson WH, Dekker CL, Steinmetz LM, Khosla C, Utz PJ, Sollid LM, Chien YH, Heath JR, Fernandez-Becker NQ, Nadeau KC, Saligrama N, Davis MM. KIR+CD8+ T cells suppress pathogenic T cells and are active in autoimmune diseases and COVID-19. Science. 2022 Apr 15;376(6590):eabi9591. doi: 10.1126/science.abi9591. Epub 2022 Apr 15. PMID: 35258337; PMCID: PMC8995031.