TSRI Faculty Interests

Molecular and Experimental Medicine

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.

Elder, John  
focuses on the molecular and biological characterization of feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), which causes an AIDS-like disease in the domestic cat and is similar to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); his goal is to develop drug treatments and vaccines that may be employed to treat viral infections in both humans and cats.

Friedlander, Martin  
examines the mechanisms whereby proteins are asymmetrically integrated into cell membranes and studies the basic mechanisms of ocular angiogenesis and potential therapeutic applications for treating degenerative retinal and neovascular eye diseases.

Gottesfeld, Joel  
is concerned with protein-DNA interactions involved in the transcriptional regulation in animal cells and the development of small molecule inhibitors and activators of gene expression.

Havran, Wendy  
studies a unique subset of T lymphocytes, called "gamma-delta" T cells, which reside in epithelial tissues, are derived from fetal precursors, express a tissue-specific, invariant antigen receptor, and are involved in tissue repair as well as epithelial inflammatory diseases such as asthma and ulcerative colitis.

Morris, Kevin  
is interested in understanding the mechanism of long antisense non-coding RNA mediated transcriptional regulation in human cells in order to develop small antisense non-coding RNA based approaches to regulate HIV-1 and human cancer.

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.

Oldstone, Michael  
studies the interaction of viruses and the immune system, how viruses persist and the resultant disease, how a non-lytic virus alters the differentiation function of the infected cell, investigates infectious protein folding disease and uses transgenic mouse models to understand human diseases. Included are molecular explorations for how viruses suppress the immune system or on the other side of the coin, induce autoimmunity.

Salomon, Daniel  
investigates how molecular mechanisms driving immune cell activation and tissue injury, both critical components of cell and organ transplant rejection, are regulated at the gene transcriptional and proteomic level to map molecular networks that determine clinical outcomes.

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.

Topol, Eric  
studies the genome of patients who have particular medical conditions or who have been healthy beyond the 8th decade to determine variants associated with the phenotype. His research moves this information forward in medicine to provide individualization of medical care in the future.

Torbett, Bruce  
studies transcriptional regulation of myeloid development and function, develops and tests novel techniques for delivering genes to cells to provide protection against HIV or cancer; he also investigates how the structural changes in HIV protease contribute to biochemical functions that confer protease inhibitor resistance.