TSRI Faculty Interests

Arthritis

Baran, Phil  
explores new avenues for the efficient and practical construction of organic molecules, both naturally occurring and man-made, by pursuing longstanding synthetic challenges and by designing methods of broad utility.

Bokoch, Gary  
studies the control and integration of cellular activities initiated by GTP-binding proteins, seeking to determine how GTP-binding proteins function, how they are regulated at the molecular level, and how this regulation may be abnormal in various disease states.

Buxbaum, Joel  
utilizes genetic epidemiology, transgenic animals, cell culture, and molecular biologic techniques to study the etiology and pathogenesis of age-related human diseases of protein conformation.

Mowen, Kerri  
investigates the molecular events which control T helper cell and mast cell function, specifically studying a role for the posttranslational modification of arginine methylation by isolating novel substrates, determining the effects of arginine methylation on substrate function, and creating mice deficient in the enzymes that regulate arginine methylation.

Nemazee, David  
studies "receptor editing," a novel immunological tolerance mechanism in which developing B lymphocytes that carry autoreactive cell surface antibody are stimulated to "reprogram" their immunoglobulin genes by further rounds of DNA recombination.

Nicolaou, K.C.  
works on the total synthesis of biologically active natural and designed molecules and the discovery and development of new synthetic strategies and technologies.

Sauer, Karsten  
We combine broad functional genomics approaches with traditional, hypothesis-driven research to identify and functionally characterize novel genes with important roles in lymphocyte development and function. A particular focus of the lab are signal transduction mechanisms downstream of the T cell receptor.

Surh, Charles  
studies how naive and memory T cells develop and survive under normal physiological conditions, and explores new ways of modulating T cells populations for treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Theofilopoulos, Argyrios  
works on the identification of predisposing and effector genes in systemic autoimmunity, as exemplified in spontaneous mouse models of lupus. Both forward (phenotype → genes) and reverse (gene → phenotype) approaches are used and several genes that promote (type I and II IFNs) or suppress (coronin 1A) this disease have thus far been identified.

Wong, Chi-Huey  
directs his research towards the development of new chemical-enzymatic strategies for the synthesis of biologically active compounds and chiral intermediates; the design and synthesis of mechanism-based inhibitors of enzymes or receptors; the study of carbohydrate-based biological recognition and its intervention; and the investigation of reaction mechanisms.