ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø

Faculty & Staff

Larry Grill, PhD

Professor Grill joined ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø in August 2013 and served as the Dean of Research at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø until 2023. In addition to teaching courses at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, he also teaches undergraduates at the Department of Natural Sciences for The Claremont Colleges. He received his PhD from the University of California, Riverside in 1979. He has published over 25 scientific papers and is an inventor on more than 30 issued US and world patents.

  1. Phiri, K. and Grill, L., 2024 Development of a Candidate TMV Epitope Display Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Vaccines, 12, 448.
  2. Henderson, E.A., Tam, C.c., Cheng, L.W., Ngono, A.E., Nguyen, A-V, Shresta, S., McGee, M., Padgett, H., Grill, L.K., Shilman, M.M., 2020. Investigation of the immunogenicity of Zika glycan loop. Virology Journal, 17:43.
  3. McComb, R.C., Ho, C-L, Bradley, K.A., Grill, L.K., Martchenko, M. 2015. Presentation of peptides from Bacillus anthracis protective antigen on Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an epitope targeted anthrax vaccine. Vaccine 33(48):6745-5.
  4. Grill, L.K., Palmer, K.P. and Pogue, G.P. 2005 Use of Plant Viruses for Production of Plant-Derived Vaccines. Critical Reviews in Plant Science 24:309-323.
  5. Grill, L.K. 2004 Production of Pharmaceutical Proteins Using Viral Vectors. In: Handbook of Plant Biotechnology, Vol 2, 781-789, edited by Paul Christou and Harry Klee. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
  6. Grill, L.K., Lindbo, J., Pogue, G.P., and Turpen, T.H. 2002. Viral vector expression of foreign proteins in plants. In Plants as Factories for Protein Production, 3-16. edited by E.E. Hood and J.A. Howard. Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands.
  7. McCormick, A.A., Kumagai, M.H., Hanley, K., Turpen, T.H., Hakim, I., Grill, L.K., Tusé, D., Levy, S., and Levy R., 1999. Rapid Production of Specific Vaccines for Lymphoma by Expression of the Tumor-derived single-chain Fv Epitopes in Tobacco Plants. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96:703-708.
  8. della-Cioppa, G and Grill, L.K. 1996. Production of Novel Compounds in Higher Plants by Transfection with RNA Viral Vectors. IN: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 792, Engineering Plants for Commercial Products and Applications, Ed. G.B. Collins and R.J. Shepherd, pp 57-61.
  9. Turpen, T.H., Reinl, S.J., Charoenvit, Y., Hoffman, S.L., Fallarme, V. and Grill, L.K. 1995. Malarial epitopes expressed on the surface of recombinant Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Bio/Technology 13:53-57.
  10. Grill, L.K. and Garger, S.J. 1981 Identification and characterization of double-stranded RNA associated with cytoplasmic male sterility. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., U.S.A. 78:7043-7046.
  11. Garger, S.J., Griffith, O.M. and Grill, L.K. 1983. Rapid purification of plasmid DNA by a single centrifugation in a two-step cesium chloride-ethidium bromide gradient. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Comm. 117:835-842.
  12. Grill, L.K. and Semancik, J.S. 1980 Properties of the complementary RNA sequences associated with infection by the citrus exocortis viroid. Virology 107:24-33.

My research entails working to create low-cost vaccines and therapeutics that can be used globally. One focus of these efforts is developing low-cost vaccines for animal diseases that are devastating to smallholder farmers in Africa. The other focus is on viral infection therapeutics and prophylactic vaccines for COVID-19 and rabies. To do this we are using technology that I worked to develop earlier in my career. Prior to joining ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, I worked in the biotech industry and was one of the founders of Large-Scale Biology Corporation (LSBC), which became a publicly held company in 2000. The biotechnology company made therapeutic drugs, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines using a unique plant viral gene expression system. LSBC garnered an international reputation as an innovator in biomanufacturing in plants and produced multi-kilogram quantities of therapeutic proteins and vaccine candidates. They had successful human clinical trials, producing patient-specific vaccines as a therapeutic treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer patients.