A. Bennett Jenson, MD, University of Louisville

The Jenson/Ghim Laboratory is a translational vaccinology laboratory that co-invented the cervical cancer vaccine (Gardasil/Cervarix), and the vaccines for canine oral papillomavirus (COPV), equine papillomavirus, murine papillomavirus, manatee papillomavirus (manatee conservation award), and dolphin papillomavirus (US7445786). These are major capsid vaccines that have been recombinantly produced in baculovirus and most recently, tobacco, with Owensboro. More recently, the laboratory has been working on a vaccine for B19, a human parvovirus that causes severe diseases by infection of progenitor red blood cells of infants and adults with anemia.

The lab is working (with the dental school) on the role of human papillomavirus (HPV) in benign and premalignant papillomas of the oral cavity and on the role of HPV in head and neck cancer (with the medical school.) This involves cloning and characterization of HPV and classification of associated lesions.

Finally, the lab has developed (with The Jackson Laboratory) the only known mouse model for HPV-induced human disease. MusPV only infects T cell deficient mice and serves as the ideal model for HPV infection of immunocompromised individuals.