Member Spotlight: Matthew Laurens

Matthew Laurens, MD, MPH, FPIDS, is Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He earned his medical degree at Mercer University School of Medicine and his Master of Public Health degree at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He completed his residency at Tulane University and his pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at his current institution, the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Dr. Laurens is an Associate Editor for the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and a former SUMMERS mentor. He was elected by his peers to serve on the PIDS Board of Directors. He accepted the position at this year’s board meeting at IDWeek in Los Angeles.

Why Pediatric ID? Having served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Benin, West Africa, I witnessed firsthand the importance of public health and disease prevention, particularly successful vaccination programs. Where I was posted in Lalo, Benin, infectious diseases were common among children and adults. Some were preventable through vaccination, such as measles, and others were not, like malaria. Part of my work was to help facilitate vaccination of infants in the region, and I saw the powerful impact that vaccination programs had on families and communities.

This had a huge influence on my decision to pursue a career that would help to advance vaccines to prevent diseases in children. After I returned to the U.S. and completed formal training in public health and medicine, I pursued pediatric infectious diseases as a specialty so that I could focus on vaccine development. I was particularly keen on helping to develop vaccines that disproportionately affect children living in low-resource settings.

Where have you taken your ID focus? My peds ID fellowship provided me the opportunity to work on malaria vaccine development, so this is my first passion as a peds ID researcher. It’s one that I have been fortunately able to continue through collaborations and partnerships. We also conduct controlled human malaria infection studies in Baltimore, testing vaccines and now monoclonal antibodies in a controlled setting before field testing.

A more recent project that I am leading is work to advance typhoid conjugate vaccines in endemic areas, many of which overlap with malaria-endemic areas. Our group helped to lead a large randomized controlled trial to test a new typhoid conjugate vaccine in children living in Blantyre, Malawi. After documenting vaccine safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy, typhoid conjugate vaccine was added to the routine immunization schedule in Malawi. We are currently measuring vaccine effectiveness and impact. We are also working with collaborators and partners to help other endemic areas to introduce typhoid conjugate vaccine into their own routine immunization programs.

What is a recent development in peds ID you are working on? I’m currently helping to lead first-in-human testing of the first mRNA-based malaria vaccines in collaboration with BioNTech, SE. The initial trial tested the vaccine component, BNT165B1, a ribonucleic acid (RNA)-lipid nanoparticle (LNP) encoding for part of the Plasmodium falciparum circumsporozoite protein (PfCSP). This Phase 1 study was a dose escalation multi-center trial that recently completed.

The subsequent trial that is underway is a randomized, dose-escalation Phase 1/2a trial to evaluate safety, tolerability, immunogenicity, and efficacy of a multi-antigen malaria vaccine that combines three distinct RNAs, encoding P. falciparum antigens encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles. One component encodes the full PfCSP, and the other two encode conserved, immunogenic segments of liver stage-expressed proteins.

In addition, I lead the Typhoid Vaccine Acceleration Consortium (TyVAC). This consortium aims to accelerate the use of typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) in endemic settings and support country decision-making. Since 2016, TyVAC has been working to accelerate access to TCVs to reduce morbidity and mortality caused by S. Typhi. TyVAC advanced three large pediatric TCV efficacy trials in Bangladesh, Malawi, and Nepal, which demonstrated TCV safety, immunogenicity, and protective efficacy against blood culture-confirmed typhoid of 79-85% in diverse geographic and epidemiologic settings in over 100,000 children. To date, six countries have introduced TCV into routine immunization, including Pakistan, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Samoa, Nepal, and Malawi. Other countries plan to introduce TCV imminently.

What do you enjoy most about being a PIDS member? What keeps you renewing your membership? I enjoy being part of a community that is focused on advancing the health of children worldwide through effective prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Our collective efforts are much more impactful than what any individual could achieve alone.

I benefit greatly from the educational and networking opportunities, the inspiration and mentorship from other members, and the leadership our society provides on important pediatric infectious diseases issues. I wanted to serve as a PIDS board member so that I can contribute to the collective work that the society advances, and to advocate for issues that are important to me, such as recruiting and training the next generation of peds ID physicians.