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Sharon M. Tennant, PhD

Academic Title:

Professor

Primary Appointment:

Medicine

Secondary Appointment(s):

Microbiology and Immunology

Email:

stennant@som.umaryland.edu

Location:

HSF-II, S355

Phone (Primary):

(410) 706-5336 (office)

Phone (Secondary):

(410) 706-5328 (lab)

Download CV

Education and Training

  • The University of Melbourne (Honors), B.A./B.Sc., French/Psychology/Genetics/Microbiology, 1999
  • The University of Melbourne, Ph.D., 2005. Thesis: Identification of virulence factors of Yersinia enterocolitica biotype 1A
  • J.N. Peters Bequest Research Fellowship, The University of Melbourne, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, 2005-2007
  • Academic Fellow, University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for Vaccine Development (CVD), 2007-2008
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Maryland School of Medicine CVD, 2008-2010

Biosketch

Since joining the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), Dr. Tennant has built a research portfolio that centers on non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) and which includes burden of disease studies, investigation of bacterial pathogenesis, and development of vaccines and diagnostic assays. She has developed live attenuated and conjugate vaccines against NTS including Salmonella Typhimurium and Salmonella Enteritidis. More recently, she has evaluated immune responses elicited by live attenuated Salmonella Typhimurium vaccines in infant and aged mice compared to young adult mice to predict how these vaccines will perform in target populations.

One feature of Dr. Tennant's live NTS vaccines is the fact that she can use these recombinant strains to secrete large amounts of flagellin into the supernatant. She has used reagent NTS strains to purify flagellin for use in conjugate vaccines consisting of core and O polysaccharide from S. Typhimurium or S. Enteritidis chemically linked to flagellin from the homologous serovar. These conjugate vaccines are effective in preclinical studies and are currently being evaluated in a Phase 2 clinical study.

Dr. Tennant has extended the approach that she has taken with NTS conjugate vaccines and applied it to the development of conjugate vaccines that target Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. She is also currently developing a live attenuated K. pneumoniae vaccine.

As head of the Clinical Microbiology and Molecular Diagnostics Section of the CVD, Dr. Tennant oversees clinical microbiology activities for clinical trials and field studies performed both domestically and internationally. She has been involved in compiling Investigational New Drug Applications for submission to the US Food and Drug Administration and she is familiar with the vaccine development pathway from initial preclinical studies through licensure. 

Research/Clinical Keywords

Molecular biology, microbiology, bacterial pathogens, bacterial pathogenesis, invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella, vaccine introduction, vaccine development, PCR, global health, and diagnostic assay development.

Highlighted Publications

Allen JC, Toapanta FR, Baliban SM, Sztein MB, Tennant SM. Reduced immunogenicity of a live Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium vaccine in aged mice. Front Immunol. 2023;14:1190339. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10188964.

Higginson EE, Panda A, Toapanta FR, Terzi MC, Jones JA, Sen S, Permala-Booth J, Pasetti MF, Sztein MB, DeTolla L, Levine MM, Tennant SM. Immunogenicity and Efficacy of Live-Attenuated Salmonella Typhimurium Vaccine Candidate CVD 1926 in a Rhesus Macaque Model of Gastroenteritis. Infect Immun. 2021 Sep 16;89(10):e0008721. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8445168.

Higginson EE, Ramachandran G, Panda A, Shipley ST, Kriel EH, DeTolla LJ, Lipsky M, Perkins DJ, Salerno-Goncalves R, Sztein MB, Pasetti MF, Levine MM, Tennant SM. Improved Tolerability of a Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Live-Attenuated Vaccine Strain Achieved by Balancing Inflammatory Potential with Immunogenicity. Infect Immun. 2018 Dec;86(12) PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6246900.

Kasumba IN, Powell H, Omore R, Hossain MJ, Sow SO, Ochieng JB, Badji H, Verani JR, Widdowson MA, Sen S, Nasrin S, Permala-Booth J, Jones JA, Roose A, Nasrin D, Sugerman CE, Juma J, Awuor A, Jones JCM, Doh S, Okoi C, Zaman SMA, Antonio M, Hunsperger E, Onyango C, Platts-Mills J, Liu J, Houpt E, Neuzil KM, Kotloff KL, Tennant SM. Prevalence of Salmonella in Stool During the Vaccine Impact on Diarrhea in Africa (VIDA) Study, 2015-2018. Clin Infect Dis. 2023 Apr 19;76(76 Suppl1):S87-S96. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10116559.

Kasumba IN, Badji H, Powell H, Hossain MJ, Omore R, Sow SO, Verani JR, Platts-Mills JA, Widdowson MA, Zaman SMA, Jones J, Sen S, Permala-Booth J, Nasrin S, Roose A, Nasrin D, Ochieng JB, Juma J, Doh S, Jones JCM, Antonio M, Awuor AO, Sugerman CE, Watson N, Focht C, Liu J, Houpt E, Kotloff KL, Tennant SM. Shigella in Africa: New Insights From the Vaccine Impact on Diarrhea in Africa (VIDA) Study. Clin Infect Dis. 2023 Apr 19;76(76 Suppl1):S66-S76. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10116563.

Ramachandran G, Perkins DJ, Schmidlein PJ, Tulapurkar ME, Tennant SM. Invasive Salmonella Typhimurium ST313 with naturally attenuated flagellin elicits reduced inflammation and replicates within macrophages. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2015 Jan;9(1):e3394. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4287482.

Additional Publication Citations

Tennant SM*, Toema D*, Qamar F*, Iqbal N, Boyd MA, Marshall JM, Blackwelder WC, Wu Y, Quadri F, Khan A, Aziz F, Ahmad K, Kalam A, Asif E, Qureshi S, Khan E, Zaidi AK and Levine MM. Detection of typhoidal and paratyphoidal Salmonella in blood by real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction. Clin Infect Dis. 2015; 61 Suppl 4:S241-50. (*, co-first authors)

Tennant SM, Schmidlein PJ, Simon R, Pasetti MF, Galen JE, Levine MM. 2015. Refined live attenuated Salmonella Typhimurium and Enteritidis vaccines mediate homologous and heterologous serogroup protection in mice. Infect Immun. 2015; 83(12):4504-12.

Boyd MA*, Tennant SM*, Saague VA, Simon R, Muhsen K, Ramachandran G, Cross A, Galen JE, Pasetti MF, Levine MM. Serum bactericidal assays to evaluate typhoidal and non-typhoidal Salmonella vaccines. Clin Vaccine Immunol. 2014; 21(5):712-21. (*co-first authors)

Ault A*, Tennant SM*, Gorres JP, Eckhaus M, Sandler NG, Roque A, Livio S, Bao S, Foulds K, Kao SF, Roederer M, Schmidlein P, Boyd MA, Pasetti MF, Douek DC, Estes JD, Nabel GJ, Levine MM, Rao SS. Safety and tolerability of a live oral Salmonella Typhimurium vaccine candidate in SIV-infected nonhuman primates. Vaccine. 2013; 31(49):5879-88. (*co-first authors)

Simon R, Wang JY, Boyd MA, Tulapurkar M, Ramachandran G, Tennant SM, Pasetti MF, Galen JE, Levine MM. Sustained protection in mice immunized with fractional doses of Salmonella Enteritidis core and O polysaccharide-flagellin glycoconjugates. PLoS One. 2013; 8(5):e64680.

Okoro CK, Kingsley RA, Connor TR, Harris SR, Parry CM, Al-Mashhadani MN, Kariuki S, Msefula CL, Gordon MA, de Pinna E, Wain J, Heyderman RS, Obaro S, Alonso PL, Mandomando I, Maclennan CA, Tapia MD, Levine MM, Tennant SM, Parkhill J, Dougan G. 2012. Intracontinental spread of human invasive Salmonella Typhimurium pathovariants in sub-Saharan Africa. Nat Genet. 2012; 44(11):1215-21.

Simon R, Tennant SM, Wang JY, Schmidlein PJ, Lees A, Ernst RK, Pasetti MF, Galen JE, Levine MM. Salmonella Enteritidis core-O polysaccharide conjugated to H:g,m flagellin as a candidate vaccine for protection against invasive infection with S Enteritidis. Infect. Immun. 2011; 79(1):4240-9.

Tennant SM, Wang JY, Galen JE, Simon R, Pasetti M, Gat O, Levine MM. Engineering and pre-clinical evaluation of attenuated non-typhoidal Salmonella strains serving as live oral vaccines and as reagent strains. Infect. Immun. 2011; 79(10):4175-85.

Research Interests

Dr. Tennant's research interests span four broad areas: Global health, bacterial pathogenesis, vaccine development, and diagnostic assay development.

Global Health:  Dr. Tennant has provided microbiology oversight for multiple global health studies. These include studies that have made major contributions to our understanding of the main causes of diarrhea in pediatric patients in resource limited countries. She oversaw the microbiology component of the Vaccine Impact on Diarrhea in Africa (VIDA) study and is currently overseeing the microbiology laboratory work for the Enterics for Global Health (EFGH) study which is determining the incidence of shigellosis in young children in 7 sites in Africa, Asia and South America.

Bacterial Pathogenesis: Dr. Tennant has investigated the pathogenesis of invasive S. Typhimurium strains from Mali and found S. Typhimurium ST313 strains circulating in sub-Saharan Africa are phenotypically very different from ST19 strains, the most common genotype found throughout the world.

Vaccine Development: Dr. Tennant has developed live attenuated and conjugate vaccines that target the most common non-typhoidal Salmonella serovars, S. Typhimurium and S. Enteritidis. The conjugate vaccines are currently being evaluated in a Phase 2 clinical trial. She has also developed vaccines against other Salmonella serovars. In collaboration with Dr. Alan Cross, Dr. Tennant has developed several vaccines that target nosocomial pathogens such as K. pneumoniae and P. aeruginosa. These include glycoconjugate vaccines, other complexed vaccines and live attenuated vaccines. 

Diagnostic Assay Development: The current standard for diagnosis of typhoid and paratyphoid is blood culture detection. However, many health care centers lack blood culture facilities. Furthermore, blood culture is estimated to have a sensitivity of approximately 50 percent and it can take several days for invasive Salmonella to be detected and then identified using standard microbiological techniques. Dr. Tennant has served as PI or co-investigator on several diagnostic studies investigating alternative methods to detect typhoidal and non-typhoidal Salmonella directly in blood or stool that do not require incubation. 

Lab Techniques and Equipment

Dr. Tennant's laboratory is fully equipped to perform microbiology and molecular biology research.

Equipment:

  • 7 biological safety cabinets
  • Thermal cyclers
  • 1 ABI 7500 FAST Dx real-time PCR machine
  • Electroporator
  • Microcentrifuges
  • BioRad Gel-Doc
  • Agarose gel electrophoresis chambers
  • Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis chambers
  • Power supplies
  • Waterbaths, vortexes etc.
  • Microscopes
  • Minus 80 freezers
  • Incubators
  • Incubator/shakers
  • PCR hood
  • Benchtop centrifuge
  • BioRad Transblot semi-dry transfer apparatus
  • 2 Nanodrops

Patents

  1. “Broad spectrum vaccine against non-typhoidal Salmonella”

          Inventors: Myron M. Levine, James Galen, Raphael Simon and Sharon Tennant

          US patent 9,050,283

  1. “Broad spectrum vaccine against typhoidal and non-typhoidal Salmonella disease”

          Inventors: Myron M. Levine, James Galen, Raphael Simon and Sharon Tennant

          US patent 9,011,871

  1. “Broad spectrum conjugate vaccine to prevent Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections”

           Inventors: Raphael Simon, Alan S. Cross and Sharon M. Tennant

           US Patent 9,988,426

  1. “Broad spectrum conjugate vaccine to prevent Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections”

          Inventors: Raphael Simon, Alan S. Cross and Sharon M. Tennant

          US Patent 10,556,931

  1. “Broad spectrum vaccine against non-typhoidal Salmonella”

           Inventors: Myron M. Levine, James Galen, Raphael Simon and Sharon Tennant

           European Patent No. 2387417

  1. “Broad spectrum vaccine against non-typhoidal Salmonella”

           Inventors: Myron M. Levine, James Galen, Raphael Simon and Sharon Tennant

           UK Patent No. 2387417

  1. Broad spectrum vaccine against non-typhoidal Salmonella”

           Inventors: Myron M. Levine, James Galen, Raphael Simon and Sharon Tennant

           France Patent No. 2387417

  1. “Broad spectrum vaccine against nontyphoidal Salmonella”

            Inventors: Myron M. Levine, James Galen, Raphael Simon and Sharon Tennant

            Germany Patent No. 2387417

  1. “Broad spectrum vaccine against non-typhoidal Salmonella”

            Inventors: Myron M. Levine, James Galen, Raphael Simon and Sharon Tennant

            India Patent No. 312110

  1. “Compositions and methods for producing bacterial conjugate vaccines”

            Inventors: Raphael Simon, Myron M. Levine and Sharon M. Tennant

            US patent 10,716,839

  1. “Compositions and methods for producing bacterial conjugate vaccines”

             Inventors: Raphael Simon, Myron M. Levine and Sharon M. Tennant

             Indian Patent Number 474533

  1. “Immunogenic compositions”

            Inventors: Raphael Simon, Sharon Tennant, Alan Cross and others

            United States Patent No. 11,612,647

  1. “Immunogenic compositions”

             Inventors: Raphael Simon, Sharon Tennant, Alan Cross and others

             Indian Patent 473829

  1. “Immunogenic compositions”

             Inventors: Raphael Simon, Sharon Tennant, Alan Cross and others

             European Patent 3641828

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