Skip to main content
2025 IDWeek Main banner
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.
Session Icons
Live Streamed
Live Streamed
On Demand
On Demand

Mark R. Schleiss, MD (he/him/his)

American Legion and Auxiliary Heart Research Foundation Professor
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN, United States

Dr. Mark R. Schleiss is the American Legion and Auxiliary Heart Research Foundation Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School. After completing pre-medical training in Medical Microbiology and English Literature at Stanford University, he graduated from the Oregon Health and Sciences University Medical School in 1985, and completed residency, fellowship and post-doctoral training at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. His laboratory, funded by grants from the NIH and CDC, studies cytomegalovirus (CMV) vaccines in preclinical models, and newborn screening for congenital CMV (cCMV). Since a vaccine to prevent congenital CMV infection is considered a major public health priority, results from his novel guinea pig model of transplacental infection have helped to inform and direct the human vaccine discussion. He led a collaborative study, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) Newborn Screening Program, of universal congenital CMV (cCMV) screening in Minnesota. He advocated for legislation codifying universal cCMV screening, the "Vivian Act", which was successfully passed in Minnesota in 2021. As a result of this legislation, the MDH is currently engaged in universal cCMV screening, which commenced in 2023. He has served as a reviewer on multiple NIH study sections, and as an editor for Current Opinion in Virology and PLoS Pathogens. He is a former Secretary-Treasurer of the Society for Pediatric Research, and he is currently a member of the Minnesota Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics Board of Directors, the American Pediatric Society Advocacy Committee, and the curriculum development task force for the National Board of Medical Examiners. As a board-certified pediatric infectious diseases clinician, he has cared for children with cCMV since the mid-1980s, and as an ID fellow in 1988 used DHPG (now known as ganciclovir) in its earliest stages of its clinical implementation. His work spans "bench to bedside" exploration of issues relevant to pathogenesis, immunity and antiviral management of CMV infection.

Disclosure(s): Moderna Vaccines: Grant/Research Support

Presentation(s):