Associate Professor of Medicine/Pulmonary/Allergy/Critical Care
| Address: | McCallum Building, 880 UAB Birmingham, AL 35294-0005 |
| Telephone: | (205) 934-6687 |
| FAX: | (205) 975-7679 |
| Email: | galin@uab.edu |
| Publications |
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Education
B.S. (Biology), University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1980
M.Sc., University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1990
Ph.D. University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1994
Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Physiology & Biophysics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1994-1996
Research Interests
My current research objectives are focused around studying the effectiveness of a particular monoclonal antibody, F28C4, raised against an encephalitogenic peptide of myelin basic protein, as an idiotypic vaccine in the animal model of Multiple Sclerosis, experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE). The rationale for using F28C4 as a vaccine results from the finding that an anti-idiotypic antibody to F28C4 cross-reacts with both F28C4 and encephalitogenic T-cell receptors and can suppress EAE. In addition to determining the efficacy of the vaccine in various animal models of EAE, I am also involved in defining the mechanisms (i.e. humoral or T-cell mediated) involved in such protection. Lastly, I am attempting to resolve the X-ray crystallographic structure of the binding site of F28C4 to see how it relates to the binding sites of encephalitogenic T-cell receptors involved in the pathogenesis of EAE.