Convalescent Plasma and Other Antibody Therapies for Infectious Diseases

Nigel Paneth MD MPH is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Epidemiology & Biostatistics and Pediatrics & Human Development in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. He received his MD degree from Harvard University and trained in Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Jacobi Hospital in New York City. He obtained the MPH degree in Epidemiology from the Columbia University School of Public Health following his residency.

After faculty appointments at Einstein and Columbia, he moved to Michigan State University to establish a Department of Epidemiology in the College of Human Medicine. The unit began as a program in 1989, achieved departmental status in 1998, with Paneth as its first chair, and was renamed Epidemiology and Biostatistics in 2013.

His central research focus has been on the origins and consequences of brain damage originating in pregnancy and the perinatal period with a special focus on the problems of premature infants. He has authored more than 400 articles in the scientific press, many derived from three large NIH-funded long-term observational cohort studies of premature infants which he directed or co-directed - The Neonatal Brain Hemorrhage Study (1984-2004) the Developmental Epidemiology Network Study (1991-96) and Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborn Study (2001 - present). Two scientific monographs emerged from these studies, with Paneth as co-author or editor - Brain Damage in the Preterm Infant (MacKeith Press, 1994) and Extremely Preterm Birth and its Consequences) MacKeith Press, 2014). He also co-edited the textbook: Cerebral Palsy: Science and Practice (McKeith Press, 2014). His interest in medical history, reflected in chapter 2 of this volume, is indicated by his co-authorship of Cholera, Chloroform and the Science of Medicine: A Life of John Snow (Oxford University Press, 2003).

He has received the Kathleen Lyle Murray award of the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy (with John L. Kiely), the Weinstein-Goldenson Medical Science Award of the United Cerebral Palsy Research and Education Foundation and the Advancing Knowledge Award of the Coalition for Excellence in Maternal and Child Health Epidemiology.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Dr. Paneth was a member of the leadership team of the National Convalescent Plasma Project, which assisted in the deployment of convalescent plasma and which saved tens of thousands of lives in the United States.

Michael J Joyner MD is the Caywood Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. He received his MD degree (1987) from the University of Arizona and trained in Anesthesiology at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. He participated in specialized research training in both programs.

After residency, in 1993 he was appointed to the staff of the Mayo clinic where he established the Human Integrative Physiology and Pharmacology laboratory in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine. Over the years Joyner has been the Vice Dean for Research at Mayo, Vice Chair of the Department Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, and a co-Principal Investigator for the institutions NIH funded GCRC and CTSA programs.

Joyner's central research focus has been on integrative physiological responses in humans to stressors like exercise, hypoxia, hyperthermia, and mental stress with a special emphasis on how sex differences and aging impact these responses. He has authored more than 600 articles in the scientific press and been funded by the NIH since the early 1990s. In addition to these interests and achievements, Joyner is considered one of the world's leading experts on human athletic performance. He has numerous publications on related topics including developing the physiological "Joyner model" of human endurance performance in the early 1990s.

He has received lifetime achievement awards from the American Physiological Society and the American College of Sports Medicine and an honorary doctorate from McMaster University (Canada). More than 30 of his former fellows have established independent laboratories at leading research institutions in the North America, Japan and Europe.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Dr. Joyner repurposed his physiologically oriented research program to focus on convalescent plasma and COVID-19. He was a member of the leadership team of the National Convalescent Plasma Project, which assisted in the deployment of convalescent plasma, and which saved tens of thousands of lives in the United States. Additionally, he was the principal investigator of the US Expanded Access Program for convalescent plasma. As the pandemic waned, he shifted his focus to the use of convalescent plasma in immunocompromised patients unable to generate endogenous antibodies. A highly effective use case the was fully licensed and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in late 2024.

Arturo Casadevall , M.D., Ph.D., is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from New York University and completed his internship/residency in internal medicine at Bellevue Hospital. The author of over a thousand papers, his major research interests are in fungal pathogenesis and the mechanisms of antibody action.

He is editor-in-chief of mBio, Deputy Editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and serves on several numerous editorial boards. He has served on several NIH committees including the NIAID Strategic Plan, the Blue-Ribbon Panel on Biodefense Research, the NAS panel that reviewed the FBI investigation on anthrax attacks, the NAS Federal Regulations and Reporting committee and the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. He was a Commissioner in the National Commission on Forensic Science and previously served as President of the Medical Mycology Society of the Americas. He served as the Chair the Board of Governors of the American Academy of Microbiology. He has received numerous honors including election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, American Academy of Physicians, American Academy of Microbiology, Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, Distinguished Fellow in Immunology and the Council for Foreign Relations.

Dr. Casadevall is also interested in the problems with scientific enterprise and, with collaborators, he showed that misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted publications. He has studied processes in science with the goal of making it more equitable and has shown that inequities in gender balance at meetings and in authorship can be remedied by changing practices.

Two books authored by Dr. Casadevall deal with scientific issues and were written for the public. In ' What if Fungi win?' (Johns Hopkins Press, 2024), he introduces readers to the fungal world discussing all its benefits and threats. In ' Thinking about Science: Good Science, Bad Science and How to Make it Better ' (Wiley, 2023), written with Dr. Ferric Fang, the authors address the marvel that is current science while also discussing the problems of the discipline.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Dr. Casadevall was a member of the leadership team of the National Convalescent Plasma Project, which assisted in the deployment of convalescent plasma and which saved tens of thousands of lives in the United States.