CIVICs Collaborative Training Program Profile: Kevin McCarthy

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We interviewed participants from the Fall 2023 cycle of the CIVICs Collaborative Training Program to learn about their experiences and their research projects. The Program provides funding for early-career researchers to collaborate and receive training from a hosting CIVICs institution in a technique that is new to their home laboratories. The Collaborative Training Program offers funding twice per year for projects that last up to two weeks. In the Fall 2023 cycle, five researchers from across CIVICs participated. We’re starting off this series with a profile of Duke CIVIC Vaccine Center (DCVC) member, Dr. Kevin McCarthy, Assistant Professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of the Center for Vaccine Research.

Dr. McCarthy’s laboratory focuses on how the host antibody response evolves in real-time to fight off viral infections and how viruses, like influenza and SARS-CoV-2, evolve around that response. He describes this interplay as “millions of years of mammalian evolution on time scales of days to weeks, to months, to lifespans” happening within an individual. Though this response evolves on an individual level, the outcomes are very similar, the virus can evade detection from the host’s immune system. Ultimately, the lab hopes that this research can be used to reverse engineer influenza vaccines that can elicit more broadly binding antibody responses.

In January 2021, Dr. McCarthy started up his lab in the shadow of a global pandemic, a difficult time for collaboration. The CIVICs Collaborative Training Program was a “wonderful opportunity to actually get out there and meet other scientists,” he said, since his lab “missed those opportunities and serendipitous events” like striking up conversations at conferences.

Dr. McCarthy, alongside lab technician, Holly Simmons, visited Dr. Masayuki Kuraoka’s lab at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI), a decision that came easily for Dr. McCarthy, since there was already a collaboration between the two early-career researchers. Dr. Kuraoka’s lab had developed a “technology that allows them to isolate hundreds or thousands of single B cells, at a single time from a single donor or group of donors.”

The technique usually takes many weeks to do, but Dr. Kuraoka’s lab devised a way to condense the process down to fit the Program’s one-week time frame. “They set everything up like a cooking show,” going from one step to the next. “We swooped in and learned everything.” Dr. McCarthy looks forward to taking this technique back to his own lab to study immune response on various immunogens “rather than doing serology at the single B cell level.” Using the new technique in-house will allow the lab “to dive into the breadth and specificity of the single antibody response” to antigens using monoclonal antibodies that they have developed in house. With a small team like Dr. McCarthy’s this technology makes larger-scale research more feasible. The CIVICs Collaborative Training Program also benefited Dr. Kuraoka’s research since Dr. McCarthy has been sending him recombinant proteins created using the techniques he learned while in the Program. Dr. McCarthy is grateful for the support that CIVICs provides to early-career researchers explaining how “these smaller awards are actually pretty significant for small labs just starting out trying to gain momentum.”

If you’re interested in applying for the next cycle of the CIVICs Collaborative Training Program, reach out to support@niaidcivics.org! The Spring 2024 cycle’s applications will close on January 30th, 2024.