BRISC

 

Sally Sarawar, Ph.D., Professor

Dr. Sarawar’s research focuses on the immune response to viral infection.  Her interests include the immune response to persistent viral infections and viruses that cause lymphoproliferative disease or malignancies. This work includes developing new approaches to prevent transplant rejection, while retaining immunity to viral infections.  She is also studying the immune response to respiratory viral infections, such as influenza, and their impact on susceptibility to secondary bacterial infections and inflammation in asthma. The development of a novel, highly effective universal vaccine for influenza is another focus of this work. Other areas of interest include investigating possible immune defects in chronic fatigue syndrome and mechanisms controlling the development of leiomyomata (uterine fibroids).

Peter Dias, Ph.D., Associate Professor

Dr. Dias’s research focuses on the development of cancer in children and in identifying key molecules that drive the growth and metastasis of solid tumors. He is also researching the role of the nervous system in diabetes and improved methods of culturing pancreatic islet cells for transplantation.

Claudia Raja-Gabaglia M.D., Assistant Professor.

Dr. Raja Gabaglia’s research focuses on enhancing immune responses to control cancer and infectious diseases. Leishmaniasis is a nelected parasitic disease affecting 12 million people worldwide, which has been studied by Dr. Gabaglia for many years. Her work is aimed at developing an efficacious vaccine that could prevent infection with leishmania and treat recurrent leishmaniaisis.  Recently, Dr. Gabaglia has been collaborating with research groups at UCLA and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil to study the effects of maternal Zika virus infection on fetal development and pregnancy outcomes.  Additionally, her work with human prostate tumors has shown that natural killer cells are a powerful line of defense against this poorly-immunogenic cancer and that down-modulation of circulating cortisol can benefit anti-tumor responses, which may aid in designing novel immunotherapies for breast and prostate cancer.  She is also interested in identifying target antigens that initiate pathogenic autoimmune responses in diseases such as type 1 diabetes, osteoarthritis and multiple sclerosis.

Yang Dai, Ph.D., Associate Professor.

Dr. Yang Dai is interested in understanding the role of self–reactive T cells in diabetes and other autoimmune diseases. The goal of Dr. Dai’s research is to identify unique event(s) that can trigger the autoreactive T cells that cause destruction of the pancreatic islets in Type I diabetes. His team has identified one type of secreted microvesicles named exosomes, which are highly immunogenic nano-sized (30-100nm) membrane structures that are released by islet cells and can activate autoreactive T cells. The research is focused on studying genetic and environmental factors causing abnormal exosome formation and release by the islet cells. Dr. Dai’s lab is also studying a new group of self-antigens, encoded by endogenous retroviruses (ERV). ERV are germline-integrated remnants of ancient retrovirus infections and comprise about 5-8% of the mouse and human genomes. They are defective in replication and infection, but certain retroviral proteins can still be expressed. Work in Dr. Dai’s lab has demonstrated that ERV Env and Gag antigens are released by tumor and stem cells via the vesicle secretion pathway. The team is testing the novel hypothesis that ERV may act as a pseudo-virus to induce anti-viral immunity directed against self, which may be the trigger of T-cell-mediated autoimmune disease.