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; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

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.