ABOUT THE LAB​

Positive strand RNA viruses infect all eukaryotic organisms. These viruses include such important pathogens of humans and animals as hepatitis C virus, Foot and Mouth Disease virus, poliovirus, Dengue viruses, Zika virus, rhinoviruses, and many others. The majority of pathogenic positive-strand RNA viruses still cannot

be controlled with vaccines or antiviral drugs. These viruses usually have small genomes coding for a limited number of proteins, thus they have to rely on simple but efficient strategies of hijacking cellular metabolism and fighting host antiviral defenses. Importantly, even distantly related positive-strand RNA viruses often rely on the same cellular factors and processes for their propagation, thus providing a possibility of developing broad-spectrum anti-viral therapeutics targeting the critical virus-host interactions.

We are particularly interested in Enteroviruses, a group of small positive-strand RNA viruses of the family Picornaviridae. Enteroviruses replicate in the respiratory or alimentary tracts and are arguably the largest group of viruses infecting humans. Enteroviruses also infect multiple animal species including farm animals and thus have the potential for zoonotic transmission.

We employ modern molecular biology and virology techniques to study the mechanisms of these viruses use to hijack and subvert normal cellular pathways for the development of viral replication complexes. The area of our special interest is how these viruses disassemble elements of normal cellular membrane metabolism and then combine them into new configurations to remodel cellular membranes into viral replication organelles.

Understanding these processes will provide us with new and effective measures against those pathogens which are markedly resistant to conventional therapies. Investigation of viral strategies of manipulating host metabolism also elucidates the intricate machinery of cellular regulatory networks which have important implications for broad areas of human and animal health from inflammation to cancer. Another important direction of our research is the development of novel anti-enterovirus vaccines. Enterovirus infections can be associated with multiple pathologies from the trivial common cold to such serious conditions as full or partial paralysis, viral encephalitis, fulminant myocarditis, and others. The long-term complications of enteroviral infections include the development of asthma, type one diabetes, and dilated cardiomyopathy. While the majority of enteroviral infections are mild or symptomatic, they can be particularly dangerous for infants and young children because they lack protective antibodies. The vast antigenic diversity of enteroviruses makes the development of traditional vaccines economically feasible only against a few of them. Among all pathogenic enteroviruses, licensed vaccines are currently available only against poliovirus and enterovirus A71. We develop novel vaccine approaches based on viral vector expression of protective enterovirus antigens, which can be rapidly deployed against any emerging enteroviral threat, as well as vaccine products aimed at inducing the immune responses against conserved replication proteins to provide a broad spectrum of protection against diverse enteroviruses.