In today’s rapidly changing disease threat environment, it is crucial to recognize and associate genome-wide multi-resolution host biochemical and molecular changes resulting from potential exposure to bioweapons and toxins. Unfortunately, few experiments have collected and integrated different types of molecular responses from humans and animals models exposed to different biothreats. Furthermore, the assessment of the efficacy of prophylactic countermeasures remains limited because the difficulty of determining the type and possible duration of immune responses.

The above situation is complicated because there is a lack of systems biology tools and genome-wide experiments capable to identify molecular patterns associated with host specific responses (biomarkers) to a particular pathogen or toxin. Nonetheless, it is widely recognized that a systems biology approach and the identification of specific molecular pathways and networks could greatly facilitate the understanding of host-pathogen interactions, aid the development of a new generation of diagnostic tools, prophylactic and therapeutic solutions.

My group is interested in developing systems biology approaches to determine transcriptional intercactions at the host and host-pathogen levels that can be useful for diagnostics and therapeutics. Our work is currently focus in elucidating the transcriptional interactions that results in animal models and in vitro systems infected with H5N1, Dengue, Ebola and Monkeypox.