With more than 16 years of training in basic science, Marion Lanteri Ph.D. acquired expertise in virology and molecular/cell biology during her Ph.D. training in France while working on glycan modifications in a context of HIV infection. Dr. Lanteri was a lecturer in immunology and virology (specializing in HIV and emerging pathogens) for students attending the Master’s degree program of biochemistry from the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France.

She gained expertise in human immunology during her post-doctoral training at Vitalant Research Institute (formerly named Blood System Research Institute) while working on T cell responses to West Nile virus (WNV) in blood donors. After her post-doctoral fellowship, her primary research focus remained WNV and extended to dengue virus (DENV) infection in humans. As a Co-Investigator and the Project Manager for the multi-center study titled “Viral/Immune parameters of Dengue and WNV in donors: blood safety implications”, Dr. Lanteri helped build repositories of biospecimens collected from longitudinal cohorts of WNV+ and DENV+ blood donors and characterized for immune and viral parameters, in order to inform the WNV and DENV screening guidelines.

Comparing the dynamics of immune and viral parameters in asymptomatic and symptomatic blood donors infected with WNV or DENV, Dr. Lanteri characterized the immune profiles associated with asymptomatic versus symptomatic disease outcomes as well as with viral persistence. Dr. Lanteri was also trained by Dr. Bernard in using the murine model and together they evaluated the remaining risk of WNV transfusion-transmission using the murine model to complement our studies of blood donors. Dr. Lanteri is also interested in using the OMICS approach to identify predictive markers of disease outcome and new therapeutic targets.

Dr. Lanteri played the role of Study Coordinator for several multi-center studies including the Central Laboratory portion of the “Recipient Epidemiology and Donor Evaluation Study (REDS)-III” supported by the NHLBI and as one of the REDS-III investigators, she has led several REDS-III studies addressing a variety of questions on the safety of blood donations and transfusions from both the donor and the recipient points of view.   

Dr. Lanteri now serves as Director Scientific Affairs at Cerus Corporation while remaining an Affiliate Investigator at VRI, participating in ongoing research with the REDS-III group of investigators on: i) Zika virus persistence using samples collected longitudinally from ZIKV-infected donors and ii) the red blood cell storage lesion through the RBC-Omics project.