Scientific Experts

Lisa Kierstead, Ph.D.

Lisa S. Kierstead, Ph.D., is responsible for the research and development activities within the PPD Laboratories vaccine sciences lab. She oversees the development/transfer, qualification and validation of assays to support the detection of humoral and cellular immunogenicity to vaccines. Her experience spans multiple disease areas including HIV, cancer, varicella-zoster virus (VZV), norovirus and
N. meningitidis. Her team supports several vaccine programs in various stages of development. She has extensive experience working with clients to move vaccine candidates through the clinical development pipeline, including regulatory submission.

Experience

Before joining PPD Laboratories, Dr. Kierstead was a research fellow at Merck Research Laboratories in vaccines and biologics. She had oversight for the testing of clinical samples for several assays in support of vaccine programs. She also managed a peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) network to ensure quality PBMC processing across multicenter trials in support of HIV and VZV vaccine programs.

Education

Dr. Kierstead earned a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center of the Pennsylvania State University. Her studies focused on the cellular T lymphocyte responses to infection with herpes simplex virus, types 1 and 2.