Scott Hansen graduated from Oregon State University with a B.S. in Microbiology in 1997 and received his Ph.D in Microbiology at OSU in 2001. He started a postdoctoral fellowship at 博彩网站 from 2001-2008 with Louis Picker as his advisor. He then was hired as a Staff Scientist II at 博彩网站 Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute and within 2 years he was promoted to Assistant Scientist in 2010.

The Hansen laboratory is focused on understanding the immunobiology of recombinant CMV vectors in the non-human primate model in order to generate vaccine vectors with the capacity to protect against progressive HIV/SIV and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb.) infection. As a postdoctoral fellow, he began developing the Rhesus Cytomegalovirus (RhCMV) vector system using a fibroblast-adapted strain (68-1 RhCMV). After sequencing, characterized, and annotating the 68-1 RhCMV genomein collaboration of Dr. Scott Wong, Dr. Hansen then constructed the first recombinant RhCMV virus vector expressing an SIV antigen (RhCMV/SIV). Over the past ten years, he has worked extensively with Dr. Louis Picker, Klaus Früh, and Michael Axthelm in testing the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of RhCMV/SIV vectors in the SIV/non-human primate model. We have shown that 68-1 RhCMV vectors encoding the major SIV proteins (Gag, Rev/Tat/Nef, Pol, and Env) can 1) efficiently superinfect naturally RhCMV-infected monkeys, 2) elicit high frequency, effector-differentiated, long-lived SIV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in both lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissues and 3) most importantly, completely protect ~54% of vaccinated RM from progressive infection after mucosal challenge (intra-rectal and intra-vaginal) with highly pathogenic SIVmac 239 from 1-6 years post-initial vaccination. A major area of interest in the Hansen lab is identifying immune correlates of protection associated with this remarkable protection afforded by RhCMV/SIV vaccination. A second, more recent, area of focus is characterizing the immunogenicity of different SIV insert constructs in order to identify promising candidates for a universal HIV vaccine insert.