School of Medicine
Showing 11-20 of 45 Results
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Mark M. Davis
Director, Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection and the Burt and Marion Avery Family Professor
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMolecular mechanisms of lymphocyte recognition and differentiation; Systems immunology and human immunology; vaccination and infection.
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Dylan Dodd
Assistant Professor of Pathology and of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHarnessing the gut microbiome to treat human disease.
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Elizabeth Egan
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (Infectious Diseases) and of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMalaria is a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitos that is a leading cause of childhood mortality globally. Public health efforts to control malaria have historically been hampered by the rapid development of drug resistance. The goal of our research is to understand the molecular determinants of critical host-pathogen interactions in malaria, with a focus on the erythrocyte host cell. Our long-term goal is to develop novel approaches to prevent or treat malaria and improve child health.
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Asuka Eguchi
Instructor, Microbiology & Immunology - Baxter Laboratory
BioAsuka Eguchi, PhD is an instructor working with Helen Blau, PhD at Stanford University. Her interests lie in understanding how cells sense and respond to genotoxic stress. Currently, she is developing therapeutic strategies to combat heart failure in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Dr. Eguchi received her BS in Biology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. As a graduate student, she developed an Artificial Transcription Factor library to interrogate transcriptional networks that control cell fate decisions under the mentorship of Aseem Ansari, PhD. During her postdoctoral research, she discovered that a telomere binding protein can rescue disease phenotypes of Duchenne muscular dystrophy in cardiomyocytes differentiated from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells. Dr. Eguchi is also developing gene therapies that address heart failure in Duchenne and Becker patients. She is a recipient of the Translational Research and Applied Medicine Award, the American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Muscular Dystrophy Association Development Grant.
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Shirit Einav
Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur basic research program focuses on understanding the roles of virus-host interactions in viral infection and disease pathogenesis via molecular and systems virology single cell approaches. This program is combined with translational efforts to apply this knowledge for the development of broad-spectrum host-centered antiviral approaches to combat emerging viral infections, including dengue, coronaviruses, encephalitic alphaviruses, and Ebola, and means to predict progression to severe disease.
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Michael Fischbach
Associate Professor of Bioengineering and of Medicine (Microbiology and Immunology)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe human microbiome is linked to a range of phenotypes in the host, but it remains difficult to test causality and explore the mechanisms of these interactions. Our lab focuses on two research areas that share a common goal of studying host-microbiota interactions at the level of molecular mechanism:
1) Technology development. Much of what we know about biology has been learned by deleting individual genes from mice, worms, flies and yeast. The ability to do single-strain and single-gene deletion in the microbiome would be transformative but does not yet exist. We are developing technology in three areas to make this possible:
Synthetic ecology: There is a pressing need for model systems for the microbiome that are defined, but of an order of complexity that approaches the native state. Key experiments in the field often show that a host phenotype can be transferred to a germ-free mouse via fecal transplant. If these phenomena could be recapitulated with a defined, high-complexity community, then reductionist experiments to probe mechanism would be possible. We are developing the technology required to build highly complex defined communities (100-200 bacterial species), make them stable upon transplantation into mice, and probe their function in vitro and in vivo.
Genetics: It is difficult to probe mechanism without genetics, and genetic tools exist for only ~10% of the bacterial species in the gut and skin microbiome. We are developing technologies that will make it possible to delete and insert genes, and build mutant libraries, in many of the most common bacterial strains in the gut and skin microbiome.
Computation: In previous work from the lab, we have developed computational algorithms that identify small-molecule-producing genes in bacterial genomes. In current work, we are devising algorithms for genome mining that are specific to the microbiome, and new tools for predicting the chemical structures of small molecules from untargeted metabolomics data.
2) Molecular mechanisms. Many of the early findings in microbiome research are correlative or associative. We are applying the tools described above to explore the mechanisms underlying these phenomena:
Small molecules: Our lab has had a long-standing interest in small molecules from the microbiota. These include: 1) host-derived molecules metabolized by the microbiome, like bile acids; 2) characteristic components of the bacterial membrane and cell wall, including LPS and capsular polysaccharides; and 3) hundreds of other diffusible small molecules (e.g., the products of polysaccharide and amino acid metabolism) that are present in the bloodstream at high concentrations. Our work in this area seeks to establish the mechanisms by which these molecules modulate host biology, especially by deleting them one at a time in the background of a complex community; and to discover new microbiome-derived metabolites present in the bloodstream and host tissues.
Ecology of complex communities: Synthetic ecology at the 100+ strain scale is entirely unexplored, and the emergent properties of complex communities are not well understood. Our work in this area seeks to understand basic principles outlined by the following questions: How many meaningful interactions exist in a community of hundreds of strains? What constitutes a niche, molecularly and spatially, and how do strains map to niches? What are the molecular correlates of stability, and how does a community reconfigure in response to a perturbation? How rare or common are stable states, and how predictable is the process by which a consortium will evolve toward a stable state? To what extent do priority effects (early colonists and events) determine the outcome of ecosystem development? Can the results of ecosystem competition be predicted or engineered? -
Stephen J. Galli, MD
Mary Hewitt Loveless, MD, Professor in the School of Medicine and Professor of Pathology and of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe goals of Dr. Galli's laboratory are to understand the regulation of mast cell and basophil development and function, and to develop and use genetic approaches to elucidate the roles of these cells in health and disease. We study both the roles of mast cells, basophils, and IgE in normal physiology and host defense, e.g., in responses to parasites and in enhancing resistance to venoms, and also their roles in pathology, e.g., anaphylaxis, food allergy, and asthma, both in mice and humans.
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Matthias Garten
Assistant Professor of Microbiology and of Bioengineering
BioMatthias Garten, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the department of Immunology and Microbiology and the department of Bioengineering. He is a membrane biophysicist who is driven by the question of how the malaria parasite interfaces with its host-red blood cell, how we can use the unique mechanisms of the parasite to treat malaria and to re-engineer cells for biomedical applications.
He obtained a physics master's degree from the Dresden University of Technology, Germany with a thesis in the laboratory of Dr. Petra Schwille and his Ph.D. life sciences from the University Paris Diderot, France through his work in the lab of Dr. Patricia Bassereau (Insitut Curie) investigating electrical properties of lipid membranes and protein - membrane interactions using biomimetic model systems, giant liposomes and planar lipid membranes.
In his post-doctoral work at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda in the laboratory of Dr. Joshua Zimmerberg, he used molecular, biophysical and quantitative approaches to research the malaria parasite. His work led to the discovery of structure-function relationships that govern the host cell – parasite interface, opening research avenues to understand how the parasite connects to and controls its host cell. -
Jeffrey S. Glenn, M.D., Ph.D.
Joseph D. Grant Professor and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Glenn's primary interest is in molecular virology, with a strong emphasis on translating this knowledge into novel antiviral therapies. Other interests include exploitation of hepatic stem cells, engineered human liver tissues, liver cancer, and new biodefense antiviral strategies.
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Michael R. Howitt
Assistant Professor of Pathology and of Microbiology and Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur lab is broadly interested in how intestinal microbes shape our immune system to promote both health and disease. Recently we discovered that a type of intestinal epithelial cell, called tuft cells, act as sentinels stationed along the lining of the gut. Tuft cells respond to microbes, including parasites, to initiate type 2 immunity, remodel the epithelium, and alter gut physiology. Surprisingly, these changes to the intestine rely on the same chemosensory pathway found in oral taste cells. Currently, we aim to 1) elucidate the role of specific tuft cell receptors in microbial detection. 2) To understand how protozoa and bacteria within the microbiota impact host immunity. 3) Discover how tuft cells modulate surrounding cells and tissue.