Director, Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC)
Professor, Molecular Genetics
Scott Gray-Owen is a Professor of Molecular Genetics at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Professor Gray-Owen’s research group aims to understand how human-restricted bacterial and viral pathogens colonize host tissues and evade the host’s otherwise effective immune response, and to understand what determines whether an immune response is effective or immunopathogenic. Their paradigm is the pathogenic Neisseria sp., which includes the two closely related bacteria that cause two very different diseases: the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea and the rapidly progressing invasive meningococcal meningitis. These bacteria are highly adapted to life in humans and have learned how to avoid immune detection and control the immune response so that they can persist without detection. Understanding how they do this reveals new approaches to harness the immune response to control other diseases, ranging from autoimmunity to cancer.
Prof. Gray-Owen’s studies in this area have led to the development of more relevant models of infection and disease and to a detailed description of molecular processes that occur downstream of human immune-control proteins from the carcinoembryonic antigen-family of cellular adhesion molecules (CEACAMs). His research has also revealed a previously unrecognized ‘pathogen-associated molecular pattern’ (PAMP) that allows innate immune detection of bacteria in the tissues. Gray Owens’s studies provide new molecular and immunological insights into the epidemiological synergy between sexually transmitted gonorrhea and HIV-1. Applications of this research include structure-based engineering of vaccines that can more broadly protect against bacterial infections and the development of a new class of antibiotics that cause bacteria to digest themselves from the inside-out.
Beyond his own research group, Prof. Gray-Owen is the Director of the Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC), a strategic initiative of U of T and hospital partners on infectious disease research and training from discovery to policy, a magnet for world-leading talent, and a knowledge leader for infectious disease-focused education and science-based advocacy. He has also been the longstanding Director of the Toronto Combined Containment Level 3 (CL3) Unit – the only such facility in the greater Toronto area, supporting research by university, industry and government agencies. In 2020, Prof. Gray-Owen received the Minister of College and Universities’ Award of Excellence for his extraordinary contributions to the COVID-19 response in Ontario.