TSRI Faculty Interests

Viral Diseases

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.

Barbas III, Carlos  
designs zinc finger protein-based transcription factors for the directed regulation of gene expression and gene discovery; programs complex reaction mechanisms into antibodies and uses them to treat cancer; develops new approaches to catalytic asymmetric synthesis; and uses phage display methods to evolve antibodies with the potential to become new immunotherapeutic and gene therapeutic approaches to diseases like breast and ovarian cancer, melanoma, and AIDS.

Burton, Dennis  
focuses his research primarily on human antibody responses to HIV and the design of an HIV vaccine. He has also worked on the interaction of antibodies and other pathogens, including respiratory syncytial virus, Ebola virus and prion proteins.

Dickerson, Tobin  
develops biochemical technologies for predicting and treating evolving disease such as influenza, hepatitis C, and cancer, high-throughput screening paradigms for protein-ligand agonists/antagonists, combating filarial parasites, and the modulation of botulinum neurotoxin.

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.

Finn, M.G.  
uses viruses as building blocks for biologically active structures, diagnostic agents, immunogenic platforms, and drug delivery vehicles; and also develops new bioconjugation methods, enzyme inhibitors, and functional materials using "click chemistry," and studies organic and organometallic reaction mechanisms.

Fokin, Valery  
develops preactical catalytic transformations for organic synthesis, combinatorial chemistry, chemical biology, and materials research; searches for novel antiviral agents, nicotinic receptor ligands, and protease inhibitors.

Gascoigne, Nicholas  
examines molecular and genetic interactions in T cell development and activation, including the spatiotemporal analysis of signaling cascades using fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) and other techniques to image molecular interactions in live cells.

Gerace, Larry  
seeks to understand the mechanisms for regulation of signaling and cell differentiation by components of the nuclear envelope, particularly in regard to muscle, and the machinery for posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression by nucleocytoplasmic transport, mRNA translation and protein turnover, with focus on HIV-1.

Ghadiri, M.Reza  
develops novel methods for the rational design and construction of functional and interesting bioorganic molecules, such as novel antimicrobial agents, catalytic peptides, biosensors, self-replicating systems, and molecular logic gates.

Johnson Jr., John  
uses a variety of cellular and molecular biology methods to develop and test atomic resolution models of particle-related events in the virus life cycle; he also uses viruses as a paradigm for developing methods to determine atomic resolution models of cellular mega-structures.

Joyce, Gerald  
studies the test-tube evolution of RNA and DNA enzymes, both to explore their potential biomedical applications and to examine their possible role in the early history of life on Earth.

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.

Nemerow, Glen  
investigates the interaction of adenovirus with host cells, looking at the basic mechanisms involved in virus attachment, internalization, membrane penetration, and nuclear localization, and seeking to design novel adenoviral vectors with increased capacity to deliver therapeutic genes to specific cell types.

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.

Ollmann Saphire, Erica  
combines x-ray crystallography, biochemistry, and immunology to analyse proteins that play key roles in the pathogenesis of Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers; structures of these proteins provide templates for vaccine design and enable rapid responses to newly emerging forms of the viruses.

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.

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.

Whitton, J. Lindsay  
studies antiviral immunity mediated by the recognition of viral peptides by host cells, the basis of immunization with plasmid DNA vaccines, and the role of the immune system in viral pathogenesis during coxsackievirus infections.

Wilson, Ian  
has broad structural biology and structural genomics programs to determine thee-dimensional structure and biological function in a number of systems related to humoral, cellular and innate immunity, human disease, drug and vaccine design, influenza virus, HIV-1 , the expanding protein universe and metagenomics.

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.