Profile of Dennis L. Kasper

Jennifer Viegas; PNAS December 26, 2019 116 (52) 26144-26146

“I was working on the microbiome before it was called the microbiome,” says Harvard microbiologist and immunobiologist Dennis L. Kasper, who for over 4 decades has delineated the central role of the mammalian microbiota in immune system development, maturation, and regulation. His achievements, including identification of immunomodulatory molecules from the microbiome and demonstration of their potential to treat certain immune-mediated diseases, contributed to the foundation of a dynamic new research field. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018, Kasper reports in his Inaugural Article (1) the discovery of a bacterial lipid anchor to a polysaccharide capsule that is required for host antiinflammatory responses. He and his colleagues also elucidate the immunologic mechanisms underlying these responses, which could facilitate the development of therapeutic agents derived from symbiotic microbes.

Group B Streptococcus Vaccines

After leaving Walter Reed in 1972, Kasper completed the second year of his residency at what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He accepted a fellowship at Harvard’s Channing Laboratory based at Boston City Hospital. Director Edward Kass was impressed by the young postdoctorate and had Kasper appointed as an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Kasper says of Kass, “He taught me how to conduct a successful academic life.”

Kasper was promoted to an assistant professorship at Harvard, followed by an associate professorship and full professorship. His active research program was initially supported, in part, by a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. In 1985 he also received the prestigious Squibb Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

For decades, Kasper worked with pediatrician Carol Baker, whom he first met at the Channing Laboratory. Kasper and his group created conjugate vaccines for 5 major serotypes of group B Streptococcus, a serious infection of newborns, for human use, and Baker successfully tested them in phase 1 and phase 2 human clinical trials (3). Although the vaccines produced good results in the trials, pharmaceutical companies were averse to proceeding with development because the target recipients were pregnant women. Over the past 5 years, however, industry interest in the vaccines has grown.

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In addition to authoring more than 450 papers and serving in a variety of administrative positions at Harvard and elsewhere, Kasper has trained almost 100 young scientists, fulfilling his maternal grandfather’s dream of his becoming a professor. His wife, Marie, is a Harvard Medical School administrator and editorial assistant on the medical textbook Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine (17), of which Kasper is an editor. He has 3 children, 2 of whom are pursuing careers in the sciences, and 8 grandchildren.

“I came from a family without formal education, but they nonetheless held academics in very high esteem,” Kasper says. “This passion for education has been passed on to our children and, I like to think, our grandchildren.” He added, “I still love coming to work every day. There’s nothing that I’d rather do.”

See more: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/52/26144

Figure: Dennis L. Kasper. Image courtesy of Richard Groleau (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA).