Infectious diseases continue to exact a high toll on the health of New Yorkers, and the potential for intentional use of infectious agents as biological terror agents also cannot be ignored.  Infectious agents may be bacteria, fungi or viruses, and each requires a different treatment modality. 

The threats to public health are especially high from newly emerging pathogens and well-known infectious agents that have become resistant to existing drug therapies, because the tools available for detection and/or treatment of these agents may be limited. In addition, medical advances in cancer treatment and organ transplantation have increased the number of people with immune deficiencies who are especially vulnerable to infectious agents. 

The infectious disease process involves a complex interaction between the infecting agent(s) and the host immune responses that are mounted against them. The immune system must respond to each infecting agent with the proper balance of attack and restraint to eliminate the pathogen without causing damage to the host. Our scientific goals are to determine how specific microbial pathogens bypass natural host-defense mechanisms during the disease process, and to identify the components of the immune system that are needed to protect against each agent. 

This information is critical for the development of new drugs to combat resistant organisms, vaccines to prevent disease, diagnostic assays to detect and track infectious agents, and biomarkers that correlate with disease susceptibility and/or progression. Investigators address these issues with a variety of molecular, microbiological, structural and immunological approaches.