Keith W. Kelley

Keith W. Kelley is an American immunophysiologist, researcher and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of Immunophysiology at the University of Illinois. Kelley was chosen as the second Editor-In-Chief of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity in 2003 and served in that capacity for 15 years. It is now considered “the best immunology journal in the neurosciences.” In 1994, he was elected as Secretary-Treasurer of the newly-formed Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society (PNIRS) and served as its President from 1999-2000. He retired from the University of Illinois in 2011, but continues to serve as a global leader in psychoneuroimmunology, creating PNIRSAsia-Pacific and PNIRSIbero-America. These scientific networks were formed to organize meetings that promote dialogue among Eastern and Western scientists engaged in psychoneuroimmunology research, as well as with those in South/Central America. As of 2023, over 30 of these meetings have been organized, mostly in China, but throughout the whole of Asia-Oceania.

In 2021, he was appointed as a Visiting Scholar at Shenzhen University in the School of Psychological Sciences, Shenzhen, China. Two years later, he was appointed as a Professor in the College of Health Sciences at VinUniversity in Hanoi, Vietnam. That same year, he worked with Chinese colleagues to establish a new scientific journal devoted to Asian health practices, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity Integrative. Its goal is to seek new knowledge and understanding of physiology, psychology and immunology as they are affected by Eastern health practices and medicine. Kelley serves as the Founding Managing Associate Editor.

Early life and education
Keith W. Kelley was born in Bloomington, Illinois on 5 November 1947. After completing his B.S. from Illinois State University in 1969, he was drafted into the US Army, serving 14 months in Fire Direction Control of the field artillery near Nha Trang during the Vietnam War. Upon completing military service in 1971, he enrolled in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, completing his M.S. in 1973 and Ph.D. in 1976.

Research
Kelley's research is focused on discovering interactions between the brain and immune system and their relationship to behavior and health. He was among the first scientists to combine immunology and neuroscience into integrative physiology. In 1976, when he completed his Ph.D., the immune system was considered only to protect against infectious diseases. He reshaped that view by applying immunological and neuroscience concepts to biomedical research. Owing to his research contributions, it is now accepted by the scientific community at-large that there is an active dialogue between the immune system and brain. In his research, he used two approaches to prove the existence of important neuroendocrine-immune communication systems: substances from the brain and neuroendocrine system affect immune responses, and products from an activated immune system affect the brain. These messengers are hormones and cytokines, respectively.

Keith Kelley is considered as an international authority on reciprocal communication systems between the immune system and brain. He was honored to be asked to write the history of the development of the field of psychoneuroimmunology and how it paved the way for a new scientific discipline known as immunopsychiatry. His career research contributions have greatly impacted the major fields in psychoneuroimmunology, including some of the first studies on the effects of stress on immunity that continue today with his Chinese colleagues, the restoration of immune functions in aged subjects by pituitary-derived hormones, the role of hormones on susceptibility to infectious disease and haematopoiesis, the molecular mechanisms that mediate the inhibitory effects of the proinflammatory cytokine TNFα on muscle, cancer and neuronal cells and the underpinnings of sickness and depressive-like behaviors. He has trained 32 M.S. and Ph.D. graduate students as well as mentoring 22 post-doctoral associates. Kelley, along with his students and colleagues, has published nearly 300 peer-reviewed scientific articles and 75 book chapters. He is well cited with a Hirsch index of 102, amounting to over 45,000 citations to his discoveries, and was continuously funded for 50 years as the Principal Investigator of NIH grants. In 2022, his entire scientific career was ranked in the top 2% of neurology and immunology scientists world-wide. He has been honored with ten university and national awards for outstanding scholarship. Kelley has been invited to present over 400 lectures world-wide in countries and regions that include all of Western Europe, Sweden, Hungary, China, Vietnam, Russia, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, South Africa, Taiwan, Australia, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

In 2011, Kelley was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Medical Sciences for “…exceptional and scholarly contributions in brain, behavior, and immunity by recognizing and advancing the physiology of immunology and its role in communicating with the brain.”