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University of Pennsylvania Medical Center
Pulmonary, Allergy & Critical Care Division
Biomedical Research Building II/III, Rm. 1014
421 Curie Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6160
tel.: (215) 898-4592
fax: (215) 898-0193
email: frog@mail.med.upenn.edu
- MD: University of Maryland
- Residency: Baltimore City Hospitals
- Fellowship: University of Pennsylvania, University of California at San Francisco
- Military Service: Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Dr. Levinson joined the Allergy and Immunology
Division at the University of Pennsylvania in 1978, after
completing three years as the Chief of the Allergy and Clinical
Immunology Laboratory at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
He assumed its leadership in 1998. Over the years, Dr. Levinson
has maintained a high profile in the educational, research,
and clinical arenas. At Penn, he has received the Class of
'92 teaching award, the 2004 Donald B. Martin Teaching Service
Award, and the Leonard Berwick teaching award, the latter
in recognition of his skills bridging basic science and clinical
medicine. On the national scene, he has been the recipient
of many invited lectureships and a frequently invited presenter
at national allergy and immunology forums. He has published
over 144 scientific papers, book chapters, and reviews and
has enjoyed consistent funding of his research by the N.I.H.,
Veterans' Administration and private foundations. Board certified
in both Internal Medicine and Allergy and Immunology, Dr.
Levinson maintains an active consultative clinical practice
where he sees patients with complex allergic, autoimmune,
and immunodeficiency disorders. At Penn, Dr. Levinson serves
as the Chief of the Allergy and Immunology Section and Director
of the recently established Penn Center for Clinical Immunology.
On the national scene, Dr. Levinson has served on N.I.H.
and Veterans' Administration research panels, the Immunology
Advisory Panels of several Pharmaceutical companies, the
editorial boards of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical
Immunology and the Journal of Clinical Immunology, and as
an Associate Editor of Clinical Immunology. He also was
elected to the Chairmanship of the American Board of Allergy
and Immunology, the presidency of the Clinical Immunology
Society, and the Board of Directors of the American academy
of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology.
Dr. Levinson's research interests
are in the cellular and molecular mechanisms of immunoregulation
and autoimmune disease.
Role of the Thymus in the Pathogenesis of Myasthenia
Gravis
Dr. Levinson analyzes the expression of acetylcholine receptors
in the thymus in an effort to determine how intrathymic
expression of this autoantigen may predispose to development
of the prototypic autoimmune disease, myasthenia gravis
(MG). His studies focus on the cellular localization of
these receptors at the protein and mRNA levels, as well
as their quantitation, and molecular regulation. In addition,
he has established a mouse model of thymic inflammation
to determine if an antecedent inflammatory response in the
thymus alters lymphocyte trafficking to this organ and leads
to a breach of tolerance to locally expressed self-antigens,
including acetylcholine receptors.
Impact of a B Cell Superantigen on the Immune
Response
Dr. Levinson is studying the impact of a novel type of antigen,
a B cell superantigen, on the immune system. Unlike a conventional
antigen, a B cell superantigen has the potential to react
with a large numbers of B cells and/or large amounts of
soluble immunoglobulin. He found that the interaction of
a prototypic B cell superantigen with the immune system
leads to the development of immune complex mediated inflammation
in certain tissue compartments. During the course of exploring
whether the microbial B cell superantigen under study induced
immune complex mediated inflammation in the lung, he made
the surprising discovery that the elicited inflammatory
response was dependent on the protein MyD88, a pivotal signaling
molecule of Toll-like receptors. Current studies are directed
at identifying the responsible Toll-like receptor, its cellular
source, and the effector molecules responsible for this
novel mechanism of inflammation.
Activation of Human B-lymphocytes Via Toll-like
Receptors
Dr. Levinson examines the effects of Toll-like receptor
activation on human B-lymphocytes. He has discovered that
a Toll-like receptor-7 agonist activates naïve human
B cells to undergo isotype switch and differentiation to
immunoglobulin secreting cells in the absence of B cell
receptor cross-linking. The molecular basis of this apparent
“innate humeral” immune response is under study.
Visvanathan S, Keenan GF, Baker DG, Levinson AI,
and Wagner CL. Response to the Pneumococcal Vaccine in Patients
with Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Receiving Infliximab plus
Methotrexate or Methotrexate Alone, J Rheum., Journal of Rheum.
34:952-7.2007
Levinson A.I.: Myasthenia Gravis. In Principles and Practice
of Clinical Immunology, 3rd edition (R.Rich et al, Edit.)
St. Louis, in press.
Anderson AL, Sporici R, Lambris J, LaRosa D, and Levinson
AI. Pathogenesis of B Cell Superantigen-Induced Immune Complex-Mediated
Inflammation Infect. Immun. 74: 1196-1203, 2006.
Levinson AI, Zheng Y, Gaulton G, and Song D. Intrathymic
Expression of Neuromuscular Acetylcholine Receptors and
the Immunopathogenesis of Myasthenia Gravis. In Molecular
Autoimmunity, Zouali M, edit. (Springer, publishers), pages
151-164, 2005.
Zheng Y, Wheatley LM, Liu T, Levinson A.I. Acetylcholine
receptor alpha subunit mRNA expression in human thymus:
Augmented expression in myasthenia gravis and upregulation
by interferon-gamma. Clinical Immunology 91(2):170-177,1999.
Kozlowski LM, Li W, Goldschmidt M, and Levinson AI. In vivo
inflammation induced by a prototypic B cell superantigen:
elicitation of an Arthus reaction by Staphylococcal protein
A requires its immunoglobulin VH binding site. Journal of
Immunology 160 (11):5246-5252, 1998.
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