The ESPID Podcast
Episode 1: Adam Finn and James Cherry
Adam Finn and James Cherry in Conversation on Paediatric Infectious Diseases
Prof. Adam Finn (UK) asks Prof. James Cherry (USA) about the birth of paediatric infectious diseases as a discipline, his experience in vaccine implementation, and the risks from measles.
A podcast by ESPID, the European Society for Infectious Diseases.
Adam Finn is Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Bristol, UK, and the Past President of ESPID.
He studied Medical Sciences at Cambridge University and then moved to University of Oxford Medical School to complete his clinical degree in 1983. After qualifying he did training jobs in paediatrics in Sheffield, Bristol and Guy’s Hospital London before taking up a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 1987. He completed his academic training as Lecturer in Immunology at the Institute of Child Health, Great Ormond St, London where he wrote his PhD. In 1992 he took up a senior lecturer position at the University of Sheffield, UK. Over the following 9 years he established both clinical and laboratory research groups there, focussing on mucosal immune responses to paediatric conjugate vaccines and the pathogenesis of upper and lower respiratory tract pneumococcal infection.
In 2001 he moved to Bristol where he is now Theme Leader of the Infection & Immunity Research Theme, University of Bristol and Clinical Research Lead – Children, Genetics, Haematology, Reproductive Health and Childbirth for the NIHR Clinical Research Network: West of England.
He also contributes to the paediatric immunology and infectious diseases clinical service for Bristol and the South West region and heads the Bristol Children’s Vaccine Centre.
His main recent research interests continue to relate to elucidation of the nature of naturally acquired mucosal immunity to pneumococcus, meningococcus and other respiratory bacteria and development of tools to assess human immune responses to candidate vaccine antigens. He also leads and supports numerous clinical trials of drugs and medicines in children.
James D. Cherry, M.D., M.Sc.
Distinguished Research Professor of Pediatrics
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Member of Division of Infectious Diseases
Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA
Los Angeles, California
Dr. Cherry received his M.D. degree from the University of Vermont in 1957 and his M.Sc. degree in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1983.
He was an intern and resident at Boston City Hospital and Kings County Hospital between 1957 and 1960. He served an Infectious Diseases fellowship at the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory and the Harvard Medical Service at Boston City Hospital during 1961 and 1962.He has held faculty positions at the University of Vermont, University of Wisconsin, St. Louis University, and UCLA extending from 1960 to 2019. Dr. Cherry has been involved in research related to vaccine preventable diseases since 1966. Professor James D. Cherry has been a pediatric infectious diseases specialist for 57 years. Presently, Professor Cherry is a Distinguished Research professor of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Following his infectious diseases fellowship training, Professor Cherry established one of the first formal pediatric infectious diseases fellowship programs in the world in 1963 at the University of Wisconsin, USA. Following this he ran a similar program at Saint Louis University and then since 1973, he has been at UCLA. During his 46 year tenure at UCLA, numerous trainees have gone on to be leaders in pediatric infectious diseases in the United States and in other countries throughout the world. In 1969-70, Professor Cherry was a visiting worker at the Medial Research Council, Common Cold Research Unit and Clinical Research Centre, Salisbury, England. From 1989 to 1996, Professor Cherry with Professor Stehr and Professor Ulrich Heininger carried out an extensive pertussis vaccine efficacy trial in Erlangen, Germany. In 2000-2001, he was a visiting scholar in the Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, England.
Professor Cherry has published 316 research papers, 108 editorials and commentaries and 303 book chapters.
He is the senior editor of Feigin and Cherry’s Textbook of Pediatric Infectious Diseases which is now in its 8th edition.
Professor Cherry has been an ESPID member for 26 years; in 2012, he became an ESPID honorary member. He was an invited speaker at 3 ESPID meetings and he coauthored talks at 6 ESPID meetings.