Top Doctors in the Twin Cities 2025: Decoding Immunity

A century ago, smallpox was an unbridled threat, the leading cause of death around the world, claiming upwards of 300 million lives in the 20th century alone. Now, as a result of routine inoculations over the years to combat this disease, it has been eradicated.

It’s a profound example of how vaccines have played a major role in quelling disease and nearly doubling life expectancy since 1900, allowing healthy people to live without fear of death from preventable diseases and giving those fighting diseases like cancer a chance to win the battle.

The basic premise of a vaccine hasn’t changed: It primes the body to launch a protective immune response by exposing it to a safe amount of a germ or a substance resembling the germ. The term vaccine actually comes from the Latin word for “cow” since many of the first experiments involved using matter from cattle that were sickened with cowpox.

Technology has advanced to create more effective ways to generate and use vaccines, making them the safest form of preventative medicine we have today. Learn how Top Doctors are using vaccines to protect Minnesotans, from newborns to the elderly, and how researchers are innovating to offer hope to cancer patients, including children with brain tumors.

Then, read on to discover this year’s list of Top Doctors, 822 professionals from 46 specialties who have been selected through a process involving extensive research and peer review.

See the full list of 2025 Top Doctors

Forgetting Past Fears

Dr. William Stauffer, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and International Medicine and faculty in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, remembers lining up to receive his smallpox shot and polio vaccine (then via a sugar cube) at the Wooddale Elementary School in Edina. Back then, kids routinely missed school for chicken pox, which could quickly spread through a classroom. Today, given the impact of vaccines, most of Stauffer’s medical students and residents have never even seen chicken pox, and fewer and fewer doctors—and people at large—are familiar with other diseases that once frightened entire populations, he says. “I don’t think we can even conceive of what the world would be like without vaccines,” he says.

Just a few generations ago, people were quite familiar with the impact of many of these infectious diseases that are now vaccine preventable, he says. “My grandfather was a physician who lived in Allentown, Pennsylvania,” he says. “The first floor of the row house was the clinic, and my father, who was a child at the time, recalled that when someone with diphtheria came in, they all knew it because they could smell it on the second and third floor.” The bacterial infection presented a telltale sweet odor, was easily transmissible via sneezing and coughing, was potentially lethal, and is now preventable with a DTaP vaccine.

In the 1950s, towns closed city pools, movie theaters, and churches as fear of contracting polio spread among parents. When a vaccine to prevent the paralyzing and deadly disease was approved in 1955, people jumped to get it. Now, most people don’t understand the fear surrounding polio.

That collective forgetfulness, he says, can be dangerous. He fears most people think of vaccine-preventable diseases as a cold with a rash and “not a big deal,” but they don’t understand that a substantial proportion of people who contract it will have lifelong complications and a number will die. People who have no memory or fear of a certain disease may be hesitant to get their children vaccinated against it. Some people have become more fearful of side effects or misinformation about a vaccine than of the potentially deadly diseases it protects against. Others perhaps feel there’s sufficient immunity, but that’s not always the case.

Herd immunity—the concept that once enough people in a community are vaccinated, a disease is much less likely to circulate—can protect people who are not vaccinated. The percentage of vaccination that’s required to achieve the status of herd immunity varies by disease, depending on how easily it spreads. When vaccination rates dip below that threshold, however, preventable diseases can reemerge, threatening the broader population. This resurgence can happen quickly, he says, pointing to the drop in MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccinations in Minnesota after a discredited doctor spread disinformation here. The current rate of young children immunized against measles is hovering around 81 percent, well below the greater than 92 percent threshold necessary for herd immunity. That set the stage for measles to infect 70 people in Minnesota last year. A recent outbreak in Texas sickened more than 700 people and left two children dead.

Although vaccines keep our population healthier and therefore save the health system billions of dollars, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to other products they are not very profitable for pharmaceutical companies to develop. Stauffer is concerned that this factor, combined with potential cuts in research and changes in federal government policy, may lead to potential vaccine shortages. “We’re on such a scary trajectory that what makes me worry the most is that the people who want vaccines eventually may not able to get them,” he says.

On the flip side, health systems are seeing the benefits of new vaccines every day. Take respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a disease that affects the lungs and a leading cause of infant hospitalization in the 21st century. When Stauffer worked in pediatric emergency medicine, it was not uncommon to intubate babies who struggled to breathe on their own and to see children with chronic bronchitis (asthma) after infection. But one year after an RSV vaccine was approved for infants in 2023, cases sharply dropped in Minnesota.

Despite challenges that may lie ahead, he says, he knows that doctors, scientists, and medical professionals are committed to vaccine research and development and to working with patients and communities to increase understanding of and trust in vaccines. “The people doing this are doing it because they are committed to serving their patients and communities,” he says. “They’re some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever worked with. They have a true belief that what they are doing is preventing suffering and saving lives.” However, he notes, they can’t do it alone. Vaccine research and development, and preventive efforts, need support from the public and policymakers.

“The people doing this [vaccine research and development] are… some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever worked with.”

— Dr. William  Stauffer

Preventing and Eradicating Disease

When Dr. Mark Schleiss was a medical school resident back in 1988, a 3-week-old baby was admitted to the ICU. “He was a pretty sick little boy, but we deal with this all the time,” says Schleiss, who is now a pediatric infectious disease provider with M Health Fairview and a professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “We used antibiotics. But he didn’t get better, and he died.”

Emotionally devastated, Schleiss went to the autopsy. “I wanted to understand what happened,” he says. “Why did this happen? What could we have done?”

He learned that the boy had died of cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a very common infectious disease. Most people experience CMV in a form so mild they don’t know they’ve been infected, or they’ll have symptoms like sore throat, fever, or muscle aches. But it can be devastating for some babies who contract the virus in utero: It is the most common infectious disease in the United States that causes disability in children, including hearing loss, vision issues, developmental delays, and intellectual disability.

In 1988, no one had satisfactory answers for Schleiss. He’s spent the ensuing decades looking for solutions.

In an important step forward, after years of effort, Schleiss helped usher in a CMV screening protocol for newborns, passed by the Minnesota legislature in 2023, that requires all Minnesota babies be tested for the virus at birth. That’s critical because, as experts have discovered, early interventions lead to better outcomes.

Still, babies who survive CMV often have a lifetime of potentially complex health conditions. Finding a way to prevent these health issues and the ensuing challenges would be both the best return for the dollar invested in developing a vaccine, Schleiss says, and of incalculable benefit to families. “The human impact [this disease] has on families and children—you can’t put a price tag on it,” Schleiss says.

And while knowledge is power in addressing the impact of CMV, only a vaccine could eradicate the disease.

Fast-forward to today, when Schleiss is participating in a worldwide clinical trial at the University of Minnesota of a vaccine that might help achieve this reality. It’s the first Phase 3 trial of a vaccine aimed at preventing CMV infection in women of childbearing age.

Earlier trials in Schleiss’s lab confirmed that the antigens in the vaccine produced immune responses in guinea pigs, animals that have a more similar pregnancy to humans than mice. More importantly, the pups of the vaccinated guinea pigs had reduced infection and reduced disease. By the end of 2025, Schleiss hopes to confirm whether it works in humans.

There have been many attempts at developing a CMV vaccine, but CMV is a complicated virus. Unlike most diseases, you can become infected with more than one strain of CMV in your life. (He also notes that CMV can affect individuals who are not pregnant, like HIV and transplant  patients.) “So you need a vaccine that is better than natural immunity,” Schleiss says.

Schleiss is hopeful about the current trial, he says, because it uses mRNA technology—a concept based on groundwork that goes back to the 1990s and began human clinical trials during the COVID-19 pandemic—that relies on messenger RNA instead of a weakened or dead bacteria or virus to prompt an immune response. He thinks the approach could be a match for the evasive virus because mRNA vaccines induce higher levels of antibodies, or the proteins that kill disease-causing bacteria and viruses, than any previous vaccines.

The ultimate goal, he says, is a world in which no babies are born with CMV. Such an eradication has happened before with rubella: People who were pregnant in the 1960s may remember this disease, he says. Like CMV, rubella is generally a trivial illness—except in babies who contract it in utero.

“Pregnant women who were exposed were terrified because babies could be born with the same problems that CMV causes: hearing loss, brain malformation, heart defects, intellectual disability,” he says. When the MMR vaccine became available in 1971, it was widely used—and rubella was eradicated in the United States.

Personalizing Vaccines

During the middle of the pandemic, Dr. Anne Frosch found out that her father had pancreatic cancer. Protecting him from COVID-19 became even more important. But, as a physician-scientist who runs a laboratory that studies immune responses to vaccines, she knew that wouldn’t be easy: Research has shown a high degree of variability in how well people respond to different vaccines, and younger, healthier people tend to have a stronger immune response to COVID-19 vaccines.

That individual experience is at the heart of her research at Hennepin Healthcare, which aims to answer this question: “Why do certain people respond better to vaccines than others?” It’s a question of crucial importance when considering vulnerable people like her father: “Sometimes, for those that need it the most, it doesn’t work well, like old people or people with chronic diseases,” she says.

Eventually, Frosch hopes the research will help scientists engineer vaccines that work well for everyone. Her lab’s research could be used to help customize vaccines. For example, an adjuvant is an ingredient added to a vaccine to induce a stronger response. One person’s immune system might need a special adjuvant to get a protective response, while other people may not need that adjuvant to generate an adequate response. Or it might become possible to design more personalized vaccines based on genes. Down the road, a genetic test called HLA typing, which is currently used to match patients and donors for transplants, could be used to match people with a vaccine that works best for them.

Some vaccines have already been developed to address specific populations that weren’t responding well. For example, people with conditions that made their immune systems weaker, such as people with diabetes or HIV, often didn’t have a strong response to older hepatitis B vaccines. But a new formulation contains an adjuvant that has boosted the response rates. There is also an adjuvanted influenza vaccine for people over 65 that can be used as an alternative to the high-dose version.

Another potential advantage of personalized vaccines, Frosch says, is that the strength of the vaccine could potentially be adjusted based on the level of protection a person needs. Although vaccines are among the safest medicines we have—taking ibuprofen is higher risk than getting a vaccine, she notes—they can have uncomfortable side effects. “Sometimes the need for a potent vaccine and the push for a vaccine with no side effects are at odds with each other,” she says. “You could use those potent responses when needed in a person who really needs that level of protection.”

Part of the reason that vaccines tend to work best for young and healthy people could be that they are the ones for whom the vaccines are designed, Frosch says. Historically, when testing a new vaccine, clinical studies have sought volunteers who don’t have underlying health conditions in order to rule out confounding factors. Unfortunately, that approach excludes those with compromised immune systems and complex health issues. “People who really need it, like transplant patients,” Frosch says. “That’s a real gap in the way we develop vaccines.”

Frosch’s current research examines how well the pneumococcal vaccine works to prevent illnesses such as pneumonia, meningitis, and sepsis in people with HIV as they age. She works on the type of preventative vaccines we typically think of when we talk about vaccination.

But the very first personalized vaccines are a promising new approach. These vaccines are therapeutic, used to treat diseases that patients already have. Therapeutic vaccines are increasingly being studied to treat cancer patients—including some of the youngest—here in Minnesota.

“In these cases, they design the actual target [mRNA] sequence based on the sequence of the cancer cells they are trying to detect and kill,” Frosch says. “For each person, the mutations in their cancer cells are unique, and an immune response is needed that targets that specific cell.”

Curing Cancer with Therapeutic Vaccines

The concept behind therapeutic vaccines is similar to preventative vaccines, explains Dr. Maggie Skrypek, a pediatric neuro-oncologist at Children’s Minnesota.

“It’s similar in the idea that it is training the immune system to recognize something (tumor cells) as foreign and attack it but different in the idea that it is not meant to prevent tumor development like a preventative vaccine is supposed to do for an infectious disease.”

Although diffuse midline glioma (DMG) brain cancer is incredibly rare, it’s a devastating diagnosis; it’s the leading cause of death from brain tumors in children. “The median survival rate is 9 to 11 months, and the cure rate is less than 1 percent,” says Dr. Anne Bendel, also a pediatric neuro-oncologist at Children’s Minnesota.

Bendel and Skrypek interact with young patients who have either DMG or the more common HGG (high-grade gliomas) every day. And traditional therapies, which haven’t changed appreciably since the 1950s, don’t help much. Radiation has significant long-term side effects, especially in children, and chemotherapy can’t effectively cross the blood-brain barrier into the brain.

Simply put: “We need new treatments,” Bendel says.

So, the two doctors jumped at the chance to run a clinical trial in adolescents based on the work of U of M researchers Michael Olin, PhD, and Dr. Chris Moertel for OX2 Therapeutics, a local biotech start-up that is funding the study.

Cancer vaccines are part of the growing field of immunotherapies that includes checkpoint inhibitors, therapeutic antibodies, and T cell transfer therapy. They all involve revving up an individual’s immune system or teaching it to better recognize cancer. Unlike most chemotherapy, immunotherapy can cross the blood-brain barrier to reach tumors in the brain.

Most therapeutic cancer vaccines work by matching an individual patient’s tumor to the exact antigens that can help their T cells learn to attack the cancer. The approach has shown promise across a variety of cancers—there are three approved therapeutic vaccines and numerous trials in adults and children testing vaccine therapies for different cancers. Of these trials, 41 are specific for childhood cancers and three are specific for childhood DMG/HGG. Still, the first trials of vaccines made from high-grade glioma tumors were not as effective against DMG as hoped. Researchers discovered that these types of tumors have another weapon: They secrete a protein that inactivates a patient’s immune cells. To combat that, Olin developed a special peptide that could counterattack.

In an adult trial, he and Moertel showed that combining the two approaches improved outcomes. They created a therapeutic vaccine that matches known antigens (proteins) that are common on the surface of DMGs and HGGs to train the patient’s immune system (T cells) to recognize these cells as foreign and attack. In the ongoing pediatric trial, Bendel and Skrypek use a multiple-step approach. First, they apply a topical cream, called imiquimod, to the vaccine site, which primes the immune cells. Then they inject the area with the new counterattacking peptide and inject a vaccine against DMG/HGG. Finally, they give a single dose of radiation on day 15. Then, the cream, peptide, and vaccine treatments are given serially for up to two years or more depending on response.

“In the animal and adult models, it appears to have anti-tumor effects, but it is too early to gauge effectiveness in our pediatric trial,” Bendel says. The goal of the Phase 1 trial is to determine dosage and effectiveness. If this goes well, they hope to open a larger Phase 2 study that will involve multiple institutions.

Similar approaches could also be tested on other cancers. Cancer tumors are very smart, Bendel explains. They are quickly able to overcome treatments like chemotherapy. And brain tumors are exceptionally tricky because they are protected by the blood-brain barrier. So, new, innovative approaches that combine strategies are critical to improving treatments—especially in kids, who experience significant long-term side effects from traditional treatments such as radiation.

“For our patient population, this is the most hopeful treatment that we have,” Skrypek says.

Cancer vaccines are part of the growing field of immunotherapies…. All involve revving up an individual’s immune system or teaching it to better recognize cancer.

Making Vaccines Accessible

While specialized and experimental therapeutic vaccines are an emerging science for individuals facing complex health issues, preventative vaccines—for most people, both young and old—are a way to stay healthy and dodge communicable diseases that are common, rare, and potentially deadly.

Dr. Nathan Chomilo, a pediatrician at a Park Nicollet Clinic in Brooklyn Center, is also the medical director for the State of Minnesota’s Medicaid and MinnesotaCare programs. In both of these roles, he works to keep Minnesotans safe by ensuring that families have access to and an understanding of vaccines.

However, recent measles outbreaks serve as a reminder of how the perceived safety of school settings is changing with shifting perspectives on vaccinations. “We have talked about the harm that measles presents, but it’s not till now that it is starting to sink in for a number of people,” he says. “Measles isn’t something I would wish on anyone I care about…and it’s but one of many vaccine-preventable diseases that we’ve been successful in containing.” At least until now.

One of the most important tools to make sure that school is as safe a place as possible, Chomilo says, is state school mandates that require children to get certain vaccines. Thanks to these policies, public schoolchildren in Minnesota have gone to school without fear of contracting a vaccine-preventable disease.

Minnesota’s more lenient policies on personal exemptions, however, present challenges, he says. Parents can easily opt out of vaccines for nonmedical reasons by submitting a statement saying they wish to be exempt based on their beliefs. Recent bills to tighten requirements haven’t been successful, he says, in part due to a small number of people who are “louder and more politically connected” than those who favor vaccine requirements.

During the pandemic, Chomilo served as the State of Minnesota’s COVID-19 vaccine equity director. The experience offered a crash course in what policies do and don’t work to increase vaccination rates.

Some strategies that work best include offering universal access/free vaccines. During the pandemic, the federal government provided COVID-19 shots for free. An older program, Vaccines for Children, continues to provide vaccines, including COVID-19 shots, to kids whose families can’t afford them. The program is credited with vaccinating millions of children who wouldn’t otherwise have received the inoculations. Chomilo calls it a program so successful that it is critical people are aware of it so that funding continues.

Another factor that improved rates was convenient access. Anything that makes it easier for people to get vaccines helps drive rates up, Chomilo says. In Minnesota, various programs aimed to do this, including mobile clinics through Metro Transit, Hennepin Healthcare, and M Health Fairview; vaccination clinics in schools and Head Start child care centers; and, back in 2021, extended hours in clinics and pharmacies that offer vaccines. These programs and partnerships helped reach a lot of communities that may not have been otherwise served, he says.

The evidence that has been published about the impact of incentives or disincentives has been mixed. For instance, programs offering cash or gift cards for getting vaccinations didn’t seem to move the needle much. Nor did paying doctors for the time they spent counseling patients about vaccines. Talking to a trusted health care provider can help hesitant patients decide to get vaccinated—Chomilo has seen this in his own clinical work—however, it usually takes multiple conversations over time. “From a policy lens, that can’t be the only approach,” he says.

In the future, incentives may take on a different shape. “If we see more outbreaks, I wouldn’t be surprised to see insurance companies and employers increase premiums for those who choose not to vaccinate,” Chomilo says. But the jury is still out on how well these carrots and sticks work. “My interpretation is that smaller-level incentives can work, but not as a long-term policy,” he says.

These days, Chomilo finds himself with bigger-picture worries about the impact of the vaccine debate and how that could undermine trust. Still, he maintains hope that people will recognize the truth in the science and be able to make sound choices for themselves and that contribute to a healthy society.

In the United States today, we no longer worry about diseases such as smallpox and rubella. Parents no longer panic about their kids getting polio at a pool party, Dr. Mark Schleiss points out.

“There is a lot of talk about ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’ when conversations about vaccines arise,” Schleiss says. “But no parent would choose to expose their baby to a risk of paralysis or lifetime disability. Safe, effective vaccines give us more freedom—freedom to be a part of a community where the risk of a disabling or potentially fatal infection is eliminated because of the use of vaccines in a community. They are used with the spirit of the collective responsibility we have in society to help each other.”

The 29th edition of our Top Doctors list includes 822 doctors in 46 specialties. Here’s how we put it together. When compiling a list that’s as relied upon as our annual Top Doctors list, research is essential. We asked physicians to nominate one or more doctors (excluding themselves) to whom they would go if they or a loved one were seeking medical care. From there, candidates were grouped into specialties and evaluated on myriad factors, including (but not limited to) peer recognition, professional achievement, and disciplinary history. Doctors with the highest scores from each grouping were invited to serve on a blue-ribbon panel that evaluated the other candidates. It should be noted that doctors cannot pay to be included on this list, nor are they paid to provide input. Physicians are chosen using a patented multiphase selection process combining peer nominations and evaluations with independent research. In the end, only the doctors who acquired the highest total points appear on Mpls.St.Paul Magazine’s 2025 Top Doctors list. Of course, no list is perfect. Many qualified doctors providing excellent care are not included on this year’s list. However, if you’re looking for exceptional physicians who have earned the confidence and high regard of their peers, you can start your search here. In addition to the list you find here, this year’s group of Top Doctors will join a prestigious group of doctors from cities around the country who have been selected to Super Doctors, the full list of which you can find at superdoctors.com.

Editor’s Note: Many of our Top Doctors have specialty certification recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. This board certification requires substantial additional training in a doctor’s area of practice. We encourage you to discuss this board certification with your doctor to determine its relevance to your medical needs. More information about board certification is available at abms.org. © 2025 MSP Communications. All rights reserved.

_{© 2025 MSP Communications. All rights reserved. Super Doctors® is a registered trademark of MSP Communications. Disclaimer: The information presented is not medical advice, nor is Super Doctors a physician referral service. We strive to maintain a high degree of accuracy in the information provided. We make no claim, promise, or guarantee about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained in the directory. Selecting a physician is an important decision that should not be based solely on advertising. Super Doctors is the name of a publication, not a title or moniker conferred upon individual physicians. No representation is made that the quality of services provided by the physicians listed will be greater than that of other licensed physicians, and past results do not guarantee future success. Super Doctors is an independent publisher that has developed its own selection methodology; it is not affiliated with any federal, state, or regulatory body. Self-designated practice specialties listed in Super Doctors do not imply “recognition” or “endorsement” of any field of medical practice, nor do they imply certification by a Member Medical Specialty Board of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) or that the physician has competence to practice the specialty. List research concluded May 12, 2025.}