Gregory Sempowski
Professor of Medicine and Pathology
Director, Duke Regional Biocontainment Laboratory

Contact
greg.sempowski@duke.edu(919) 684-4386
909 S. La Salle St., Rm 1019 Global Health Research Building
View Website Download C.V.Gregory Sempowski
Professor of Medicine and Pathology
Director, Duke Regional Biocontainment Laboratory
Dr. Sempowski earned his PhD in Immunology in 1997 from the University of Rochester and was specifically trained in the areas of inflammation, wound healing, and host response (innate and adaptive). Dr. Sempowski contributed substantially to the field of lung inflammation and fibrosis defining the roles of pulmonary fibroblast heterogeneity and CD40/CD40L signaling in regulating normal and pathogenic lung inflammation. During his postdoctoral training with Dr. Barton F. Haynes at Duke University, Dr. Sempowski focused on human immunology and more specifically immune reconstitution in settings of immune deficiency. This resulted in publication of seminal findings regarding the cellular and molecular mechanisms that drive attenuation of immune function in the elderly.
Since joining the Duke School of Medicine faculty in 2000, Dr. Sempowski has developed an independent research program studying immune deficiency associated with aging and radiation exposure. Dr. Sempowski is highly collaborative and works closely with investigators across the US, Europe, Australia and Japan and is internationally recognized as a thought leader in thymic aging, immunosenescence and multiplex biomarker analysis.
In 2017, Dr. Sempowski assumed the directorship of the Duke Global Health Research Building, a division of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute. This state-of-the-art Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL) was built with funding from the NIH to support basic research to develop drugs, diagnostics and vaccines for emerging/reemerging infections and biodefense. The Duke RBL has a comprehensive safety and operations program to provide the Duke and RTP communities biocontainment facilities for BSL2, BSL3, and Select Agent research. The facility is home to a portfolio of sponsored research programs focused on biosafety and biopreparedness, vaccine and therapeutic development, host response and immune monitoring and assay proficiency and quality assurance.
Publications
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Sonar SA, Uhrlaub JL, Coplen CP, Sempowski GD, Dudakov JA, van den Brink MRM, et al. Early age-related atrophy of cutaneous lymph nodes precipitates an early functional decline in skin immunity in mice with aging. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Apr 26;119(17):e2121028119.Giroux NS, Ding S, McClain MT, Burke TW, Petzold E, Chung HA, et al. Differential chromatin accessibility in peripheral blood mononuclear cells underlies COVID-19 disease severity prior to seroconversion. Res Sq. 2022 Apr 7;Whitley J, Zwolinski C, Denis C, Maughan M, Hayles L, Clarke D, et al. Development of mRNA manufacturing for vaccines and therapeutics: mRNA platform requirements and development of a scalable production process to support early phase clinical trials. Transl Res. 2022 Apr;242:38–55.Gobeil SM-C, Henderson R, Stalls V, Janowska K, Huang X, May A, et al. Structural diversity of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron spike. Mol Cell. 2022 Mar 25;
See more publications at Scholars@Duke