Rob Maile, Ph.D.

Hear how I pronounce my name

My initial interest in burn in 2001 was sparked by the concept that patients suffering burn injury have profound immune suppression leading to bacterial susceptibility, but a paradoxical ability to reject allografted skin very efficiently.

My overarching personal research interest is in innate and adaptive immune regulation during health and in disease, using models of burn, bacterial and viral infection, transplantation and autoimmunity. My research projects have examined regulation of adaptive and innate immune responses against autoimmune, allograft, viral and bacterial elements. My focus at the NC Jaycee Burn Center for 20 years, and now at the UF Burn Center and SCIRC, is to develop a translational and collaborative Immunology research program to tease apart the mechanisms of the acute and chronic immune effects of burn injury and resultant sepsis.

I use an established mouse model of burn injury and have developed NIH and DoD-funded animal models of burn injury combined with radiation or inhalation injury to test potential countermeasures. I have developed various methodologies to test bacterial susceptibility in these models. I also have the unique ability to translate my findings with a large number of banked burn patient blood, skin and pulmonary samples within a central Burn Biorepository (currently comprising ~2,000 longitudinal samples from ~300 patients, and, pertinent to this Proposal, actively recruiting further samples). My goal is to provide meaningful immunotherapeutics, changes in clinical strategy and clinical diagnostics which will reduce the overall mortality, and length of hospital stay of burn and other trauma patients.