Dr. Sarawar’s research focuses on the immune response to viral infection. Her interests include the immune response to persistent viral infections, oncogenic viruses and the balance between preventing rejection and retaining immunity to viral infections in transplantation. She is also studying the immune response to respiratory viral infections such as influenza and the impact of viral respiratory infections on susceptibility to secondary bacterial infections and inflammation in asthma. In collaboration with partners in both industry and academia, she is working to develop an effective universal vaccine to influenza and is testing the effects of novel adjuvants on the efficacy of vaccines to different infectious diseases. A further goal of her studies is to understand why the effects of some vaccines are short-lived and to develop methods to extend vaccine-mediated protection.

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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.

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Dr. Raja-Gabaglia’s research focuses on enhancing immune responses to control cancer and infectious diseases. Leishmaniasis is a neglected parasitic disease affecting 12 million people worldwide, which Dr. Gabaglia has studied for many years. Her work is aimed at developing an efficacious vaccine that could prevent infection with leishmania and treat recurrent disease. Over the last few years, Dr. Gabaglia has been involved in a collaboration with research groups at UCLA and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation of Brazil to study the effects of maternal Zika virus infection on fetal development and pregnancy outcomes. This collaboration has recently been extended to study the COVID pandemic in Brazil. 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-regulation 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 investigating antigens that initiate pathogenic autoimmune responses in diseases such as Type 1 diabetes, osteoarthritis and multiple sclerosis.

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Dr. Dai is interested in understanding the role of autoreactive T cells in diabetes and other autoimmune diseases. The goal of Dr. Dai’s research is to identify unique events and molecular pathways that can trigger the autoreactive T cells to cause destruction of the pancreatic islets in Type 1 diabetes (T1D). His team have 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 the autoreactive T cells. This 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). Work in Dr. Dai’s lab has demonstrated that ERV Gag antigens are released by tumor and mesenchymal stem cells via vesicle-secreting pathways. His team is testing the novel hypothesis that specific ERV antigens may form pseudovirus to trigger T-cell-mediated autoimmune diseases such as T1D.

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Dr Koka’s interests are focused on the mechanisms of and therapies for hematological disorders in HIV-1 infections, for which he was awarded the American Society of Hematology Award of Excellence in May 2007. His work has shown that HIV-1 inhibits differentiation of HIV-1 infection-resistant CD34+ hematopoietic progenitor stem cells in an indirect manner via the infected CD4+ T-cells in vivo. He has conducted preclinical research involving recombinant lentivirus transduction of human CD34+ cells for in vivo rescue of hematopoiesis in c-mpl engrafted SCID-hu mice. Recently he has led efforts that resulted in the identification and characterization of a differential regulation of the microRNAs, miR-15a and miR-24, secreted by the HIV-1 infected T-cells, as a cause of the effect on CD34+ cells. He has also studied SARS-CoV-2 infection of, or interactions with, the CD34+ and CD133+ progenitor cell subsets as a cause of hematological and immunological dysfunction, either in a direct or an indirect manner. He is particularly interested in virus-mediated effects on CD34+ cells that may have an indirect impact on virus infection-resistant T and B lymphocytes that lack the SARS-CoV-2 receptors and the potential role in thymopoiesis and cytokine storm in COVID-19. He proposes to track miRNA mediated homeobox gene translational regulation of hematopoiesis, via single-cell proteomics as a mechanistic model to develop therapies. He has also been investigating LKB1-RAB7-NRP1 interactions in cancer stem cells.

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