Stephen C. Jones, PhD
Stephen C. Jones is an assistant professor of immunology and assistant preclinical dean at the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in Middletown, New York. He earned his Ph.D. in immunology from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake, N.Y., and a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Jones’s ongoing research projects include the study of the immune response to multiple myeloma and the influence of environmental factors on the development of inflammatory disease.
In 2008, Dr. Jones joined Touro as an Assistant Professor of Immunology. In 2009 he became Course Director of TouroCOM’s Introduction to Immunology and Medical Microbiology and Immunology courses and was the recipient of TouroCOM’s 2012 Teacher of the Year award. Dr. Jones is also a member of the faculty of Kaplan Medical, in which capacity he teaches an Immunology Review Series to medical students from all over the world preparing to take Step 1 of the medical boards. Dr. Jones’ teaching philosophy is grounded in the belief that the best basic science instructors present material not as a number of individual facts or terms to be memorized, but rather in a format that pieces together the mechanism of a larger process. In this way, students are presented not only with the roles of individual components of a biological system but also with the mechanics of how these components work together to fulfill a larger, clinically significant function.
Dr. Jones has served as the TouroCOM Faculty Forum Chair, and currently contributes to a number of TouroCOM’s administrative committees, including the Student Promotions, Research, and Biosafety Committees and serves as the Chair of the Rank and Credentials Committee.
Dr. Jones resides in Sussex County, NJ, with his wife and four children, and enjoys backpacking, mountain biking and skiing, as well as family hiking and camping trips.
Areas of Expertise
Vaccination, immunodeficiency diseases, autoimmune diseases, and gerontology
Honors and Awards
- 2012 Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine Teacher of the Year Award. Presented at the Class of 2014 White Coat Ceremony, New York Academy of Medicine.
- 2011 Touro College Faculty Research Award. Amount: $4,300. For Mechanisms of suppression of the immune system in patients with multiple myeloma.
Research
While at Thomas Jefferson, Dr. Jones investigated the development of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a potentially lethal complication of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. His research established the fundamental requirement for alloantigens expressed by non-hematopoietic tissues in the development of GVHD. Dr. Jones was also the first to demonstrate that the delayed infusion of regulatory T cells following a bone marrow transplant could be used to ameliorate the development of GVHD, a body of work that won him the Ernest McCulloch & James Till Award for the best basic science paper published by a new investigator in the journal of Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation.
During his postdoctoral fellowship at the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake, NY, Dr. Jones investigated the mechanistic basis of the defects in the adaptive immune response that are seen in the elderly. While at the Trudeau Dr. Jones was awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate novel vaccination approaches that more effectively protect the elderly against infectious disease. As part of this research, he demonstrated that chemical compounds derived from certain microbes may be used as adjuvants to help boost the immune response of the elderly.
Dr. Jones's ongoing research projects at TouroCOM include the study of the immune response to multiple myeloma, the influence of hyaluronan on the function of the immune system, and the study of how environmental factors influence the development of inflammatory disease in a zebrafish animal model.
Publications
- Jones, S. C. (2019). Overview of Immunology and Allergy. In Allergy and Asthma: The Basics to Best Practices (pp. 3–29). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05147-1_1
