The Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences

Deborah H. Spector

Dr. Deborah Spector received her Ph.D. in 1975 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She spent 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratories of Mike Bishop and Harold Varmus at UCSF, where she showed that the src oncogene was a conserved eukaryotic gene that was expressed in both normal and transformed cells. She became an Assistant Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at UCSD in 1978 and began her studies on cytomegalovirus. In 2005, she moved to the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UCSD.

Research Interests

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), a herpesvirus, is the major viral cause of birth defects and poses serious problems for individuals who are immunocompromised. Between 0.5% to 2.5% of newborns are infected with HCMV, and of the 5% to 10% that are symptomatic at birth, most develop sequelae such as microcephaly, sensorineural hearing loss, optic atrophy and chorioretinitis, and motor disabilities. While the serological status of the mother positively correlates with protection of the newborn from disease, there is evidence that prior maternal immunity is not completely protective against neonatal disease from recurrent infection or infection with a different HCMV strain. The long-term goal of our work is to determine how the interplay of viral and host functions relates to the in vivo pathogenesis, and to use this information to develop effective strategies for treatment and prevention of disease.

Selected Publications

Morello, C.S., M. Ye, S. Hung, and D.H. Spector. (2005). Systemic prime-boost immunization with a trivalent plasmid DNA and inactivated murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) vaccine provides long-term protection against viral replication following systemic or mucosal MCMV challenge. J. Virol. 79:159-175.

Tamrakar, S., A. J. Kapasi, and D. H. Spector (2005). Human cytomegalovirus infection induces specific hyperphosphorylation of the carboxyl-terminal domain of the large subunit of RNA polymerase II that is associated with changes in the abundance, activity, and localization of cdk9 and cdk7. J Virol. 79:15477-15493

Sanchez, V. and D. H. Spector (2006). Cyclin-dependent kinase activity is required for efficient expression and posttranslational modification of human cytomegalovirus proteins and for production of extracellular particles. J. Virol. 80: 5886-5896.

Shlapobersky, M., R. Sanders, C. Clark, and D.H. Spector (2006). Repression of HMGA2 gene expression by human cytomegalovirus involves the IE2 86-kilodalton protein and is necessary for efficient viral replication and inhibition of cyclin A transcription. J. Virol. 80:9951-9961.

Morello, C. S., L. A. Kelley, M. W. Munks, A. B. Hill, and D. H. Spector. 2007. DNA immunization using the highly conserved murine cytomegalovirus genes encoding the homologs of human cytomegalovirus UL54 (DNA polymerase) and UL105 (helicase) elicits strong CD8 T responses and is protective against systemic challenge. J. Virol. 81:7766-7775.

Sanchez V, J. A. Mahr, N. I. Orazio, and D. H. Spector. 2007. Nuclear export of the human cytomegalovirus tegument protein pp65 requires cyclin-dependent kinase activity and the Crm1 exporter. J. Virol. 81:11730-11736.

Tran, K., J. A. Mahr, J. Choi, J. G. Teodoro, M. R. Green, and D. H. Spector. 2008. Accumulation of substrates of the anaphase-promoting complex (APC) during human cytomegalovirus infection is associated with the phosphorylation of cdh1 and the dissociation and relocalization of the APC subunits. J. Virol. 82:529-537.

Kapasi, A. J. and D.H. Spector. 2008. Inhibition of the cyclin-dependent kinases at the beginning of the human cytomegalovirus infection specifically alters the levels and localization of the RNA polymerase II carboxyl-terminal domain kinases cdk9 and cdk7 at the viral transcriptosome. J. Virol. 82:394-407.

Grey, F., H. Meyers, E. A. White, D. H. Spector, and J. Nelson. 2008. A Human Cytomegalovirus-Encoded microRNA Regulates Expression of Multiple Viral Genes Involved in Replication. PLoS Pathog. Nov 2;3(11):e163.

List of Publications in Pub Med