Fungal infections constitute a major threat to an ever expanding spectrum of immune- and medically-compromised patients. The opportunistic pathogenic fungi Candida spp., Aspergillus spp. and Cryptococcus neoformans are among the most common etiologic agents of mycoses; but infections caused by other yeasts and moulds are on the rise as advances in modern medicine prolongs lives resulting in increasingly susceptible and vulnerable patients.

Increased inflammation affects the immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) infection in old and young mice in ways not yet understood. The project objective is to determine the mechanisms in which inflammation influences the response to early M.tb infection in young and old mice. The goal of the project is to determine ways inflammation can be modulated with anti-inflammatory treatment to improveM.tb infection outcome in young and old mice, and to apply this knowledge to benefit tuberculosis disease outcome in elderly persons and persons with increased inflammation.

This program will test the immunogenicity and efficacy of a novel HIV vaccine.

Cerebral Malaria (CM) is an encephalopathy that causes an estimated 343,000 yearly deaths as a result of Plasmodium falciparum infection. Survivors experience long-term neurological sequelae. Cerebral vascular dysfunction is well documented on autopsy of CM patients. Signs include congestion of cerebral blood vessels, adhesion of both parasites and leukocytes to the vascular endothelium, and thrombi in all verified CM patients.

We propose a strategy of host derived IL-10 modulation, strictly at the time of vaccination for generating a qualitatively different set of T cells resulting in sustained long-term protection against M.tb infection in mice.

The goal of this research project is to perform Ebola infected PK/PD qPCR analysis for the efficacy study of mAb therapeutic against EBOV lethal challenge in rhesus macaques.

The objective of this study is to evaluate PK/PD parameters of the filovirus therapeutics in a non-human primate model following lethal intramuscular filovirus challenge (e.g. Zaire ebolavirus, Sudan ebolavirus, Marburg virus).

A distinguishing trait of heme enzymes is that a high-valent iron-oxo species is the common oxidant for mediating a remarkable array of oxidation reactions. However, the conundrum is that each enzyme in general only promotes a specific type of reaction. How the reaction type is determined after formation of the key oxidant remains to be an unsolved question. Answers to this question have implications for our fundamental understanding of enzyme catalysis as well as de novo enzyme design and protein engineering.

The major goal of the project is to evaluate efficacy of new therapeutics for filoviruses (e.g. Zaire ebolavirus, Sudan ebolavirus, Marburg virus) in lethal intramuscular challenge non-human primate models.

The objective of this task is to evaluate efficacy of new therapeutics for EBOV in a lethal intramuscular challenge nonhuman primate models