Sylvie Bertholet, PhD

Senior Scientist

Sylvie Bertholet, Ph.D. is a native of Switzerland and obtained her PhD in immunology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1995. Her doctorate work was completed in Dr. Giampietro Corradin’s laboratory and involved the “Characterization of MHC class I H-2K^d-restricted epitopes in the p53 tumor antigen and induction of cytotoxic CD8⁺ T lymphocytes in mice primed with synthetic peptides.” Following her graduation, Sylvie did her post-doctoral work in Prof. Jacques Mauel’s laboratory, where she worked on the microbicidal activity of human macrophages toward Leishmania parasites. During that time, Sylvie taught Immunology and Biochemistry to undergraduate and graduate students. In 1999, Sylvie moved to the US, first at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Bethesda MD, where she joined Dr. Richard Kenney’s laboratory to study Leishmania-dependent inhibition of the IFN-g signaling pathway in infected macrophages; and later in 2001, at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID/NIH) with Dr. David Sacks, where she contributed to the understanding of cross-presentation of Leishmania antigen to CD8⁺ T lymphocytes. While at the NIH, Sylvie was awarded twice the Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE) award. 

Sylvie joined IDRI as a Senior Scientist in October of 2005. She is currently leading efforts related to the pre-clinical characterization of vaccines against Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Streptococcus pneumoniae infections. She is also involved in immunological evaluation for vaccines against Leishmania ssp. infections and evaluation of adjuvant formulations for vaccines against Plasmodium falciparum. She has co-authored over 20 original articles.