Faculty Member

Anne A. Gershon, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases
B.A. 1960, Smith College
M.D. 1964, Cornell University 

Dr. Gershon's interests include epidemiology, diagnosis, immunology, latency, prevention, and treatment of varicella and zoster as well as HIV/AIDS.  Her studies with varicella vaccine included examinations of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine in leukemic children and adults.  Dr. Gershon is attempting to determine how varicella-zoster virus (VZV) causes and maintains latent infection. Her group has demonstrated VZV RNA and DNA in sensory ganglia from autopsy specimens.  They have identified VZV RNA sequences and proteins of immediate early and early genes in neurons in ganglia from patients with past varicella and no zoster.  These immediate early proteins are demonstrated in the cytoplasm of latently infected ganglia.  In contrast, in lytic infection these proteins are present in both the nucleus and the cytoplasm.  It is postulated that the sequestration of these proteins in the cytoplasm results in latent infection; when these proteins are allowed by the neuron to enter the nucleus, lytic infection develops.  In other studies, Dr. Gershon is evaluating trafficking of VZV proteins within infected tissue culture cells, using electron microscopy and autoradiography.  Since VZV envelope glycoproteins contain phosphorylated oligosaccharides, it is proposed that binding of VZV to mannose 6-phosphate receptor (MPRs) in the TGN is responsible for directing newly synthesized VZV to prelysosomes.  Because MPRs also cycle to the cell surface, binding of VZV to MPRs of the plasma membrane might facilitate infection of target cells if VZV in vivo were to escape diversion to prelysosomes.  The group has demonstrated that envelopment of VZV is a two-stage process, involving envelopment and de-envelopment followed by re-envelopment.  This mechanism is increasingly recognized to occur generously in the herpes viruses.

Vazquez, M., P. S. LaRussa, A. A. Gershon, L. M. Niccolai, C. E. Muehlenbein, S. P. Steinberg, E. D. Shapiro. Effectiveness over time of varicella vaccine. JAMA 291:851-5, 2004.

Chen JJ, Gershon AA, Li ZS, Lungu O, Gershon MD. Latent and lytic infection of isolated guinea pig enteric ganglia by varicella zoster virus. J Med Virol 70:S71-8, 2003. 

Wang ZH, Gershon MD, Lungu O, Zhu Z, Mallory S, Arvin AM, Gershon AA.  Essential role played by the C-terminal domain of glycoprotein I in envelopment of varicella-zoster virus in the trans-Golgi network: interactions of glycoproteins with tegument.  J Virol 75:323-40, 2001.

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