Vera Tarakanova, PhD

Vera Tarakanova is a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. She received her PhD from Saint Louis University, studying human adenoviruses in William Wold’s group.

For postdoctoral training she joined Skip Virgin’s group at Washington University in St. Louis to continue her studies of cancer-associated viruses, enabled by the highly tractable murine gammaherpesvirus-68 system.

In the past 16 years, the Tarakanova group had conducted interdisciplinary studies defining host and viral factors that shape the pathogenic gammaherpesvirus-driven germinal center response. The Tarakanova group continues to uncover how traditional innate immune factors and host lipid metabolism are usurped by gammaherpesvirus to facilitate lytic replication and chronic infection of an intact natural host.

Julia Davydova, MD, PhD

Dr. Julia Davydova has over 20 years of experience in gene therapy and cancer research, holding medical and doctoral degrees from the Siberian State Medical University. She received her training in virus-based therapy at the Gene Therapy Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Currently, she is an associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Surgery and the university’s Masonic Cancer Center, with additional faculty appointments at the Institute for Molecular Virology, Center for Genome Engineering, and other advanced training programs.

Davydova’s research centers on developing oncolytic adenoviruses for cancer treatment, imaging, and immunotherapies, with collaborative projects spanning multiple labs and clinical centers globally. She has led numerous National Institutes of Health-funded projects, including three R01 grants, and has authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications.

As a dedicated mentor, Davydova has guided trainees at various stages of their academic and professional journeys, from undergraduates to junior faculty. She chairs the Educational Committee for the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy and actively participates in organizing educational events, shaping curricula, and promoting career development within the field. In addition, she contributes to NIH and international grant review panels and serves as a standing member of the NIH Translational Immuno-Oncology study section.

Kelly Makielski DVM, MS, DACVIM

Kelly Makielski is an assistant professor of small animal internal medicine at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine.

Makielski completed veterinary school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by internal medicine specialty training at Iowa State University.

Makielski then completed a post-doc fellowship at the University of Minnesota, investigating the immune response induced by oncolytic virotherapy in canine osteosarcoma, before joining the faculty in 2022.

Her current research focuses on identifying biomarkers to guide therapy in canine and human osteosarcoma.

Pippa Cosper, MD, PhD

Dr. Pippa Cosper received her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin. She then enrolled in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Colorado, where she joined the lab of Dr. Leslie Leinwand, an HHMI Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. During this time, she studied the mechanisms underlying cardiac muscle atrophy due to cancer and was the first to establish and describe a murine model of this specific type of cachexia.

After medical school, Cosper started her residency in radiation oncology at Washington University in St. Louis. She was admitted to the B. Leonard Holman Research Pathway from the American Board of Radiology, which provided 18 months of fully protected research time during residency. During this time, she studied gene expression differences in paired cervical tumor biopsies before and during chemoradiation to determine genes associated with radiation resistance.

This work revealed that maintenance of human papillomavirus oncogene expression and a reduced local immune response were associated with a decreased response to chemoradiation and poor patient outcomes. This work led to an interest in how HPV modulates tumor biology and therapeutic response.

After residency, Cosper pursued further post-doctoral training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she continued her HPV studies but was also introduced to the field of chromosomal instability under Drs. Beth Weaver and Paul Lambert. There, she characterized a novel mechanism of HPV-induced chromosomal instability.

Her laboratory now focuses on HPV-associated cancers and aims to study how to use a tumor’s inherent chromosomal instability as an Achilles heel to promote radiation induced cell death. The ultimate goal of her research is to create a more personalized therapy based upon each patient’s unique tumor biology.

Megan Spurgeon, PhD

Dr. Megan Spurgeon is an investigator at the John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Center for Research in Virology at the Morgridge Institute for Research. Spurgeon also is an assistant professor of oncology at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research and Department of Oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Research in the Spurgeon Lab investigates the virus-host interactions of two human tumor viruses, Merkel cell polyomavirus and human papillomaviruses, through the development and application of novel preclinical models to elucidate the mechanisms by which their viral proteins cause disease and cancer.

• Due to a generous donation by the Agnes W.H. Tan family, this symposium is free. However, online registration is required.  
• Participants can register for the morning sessions, afternoon sessions, or the entire day.
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