Dr. Mark Primental
Dr. Mark Pimentel, serves as a Director of Cedars-sinai Gi Motility Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Pimentel has been the Chairman of Clinical Advisory Board at Synthetic Biologics Inc. since April 2014. Dr. Pimentel is an Associate Professor of Medicine at CSMC in Los Angeles, California. Active in research, Dr. Pimentel has served as a principal investigator or co-investigator for numerous basic science, translational and clinical studies in such areas as IBS, and the relationship between gut flora composition and human disease. His work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, American Journal of Physiology, American Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Gastroenterology and Digestive Diseases and Sciences, among others. Dr. Pimentel has been invited to present his work at meetings, grand rounds, and advisory boards in the United States and Internationally.
Scott Bultman
Betsy Herold
Betsy Herold, M.D. directs a basic and translational research program, which focuses on the prevention of HIV and HSV and other sexually transmitted infections. Basic research in the lab focuses on defining the cellular signaling pathways that HSV-2 usurps to promote infection. Current work from our laboratory demonstrates that HSV activates calcium (Ca2+), integrin, and phosphorylation signaling pathways and that these pathways play critical roles in the establishment of infection and in cell-to-cell spread of virus. .More recently, the lab has identified a novel cellular protein that plays a key role in the initiation of viral protein expression and could serve as a novel target for prevention strategies. Identification of the viral and cellular factors required for infection has led to development of candidate drugs, which have been formulated for vaginal delivery to prevent both HSV and HIV infection.
David Pride
David Pride’s laboratory focuses on identifying viral members of the human microbiome and in identifying their contributions to human health and disease. He is working on understanding the ecology of viruses and their consequences for our close contacts, characterizing their contributions to community antibiotic resistance, and developing model systems to understand how they respond to perturbations.
Larry J. Forney
The research done in Dr. Larry Forney’s laboratory centers on the diversity and distribution of prokaryotes. Both field and laboratory studies are done to explore the temporal and spatial patterns of community diversity, as well as factors that influence the dynamics of inter- and intra-species competition. In addition research is done to understand how spatial structure and the resulting environmental gradients influence the tempo and trajectory of adaptive radiations in bacterial species and the maintenance of diversity. Most of these studies are highly interdisciplinary in nature, and done in collaboration with mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, geologists, environmental engineers, physicians, and clinical scientists.
Iliyan D. Iliev
Iliyan Iliev is an Immunologist and an assistant professor at the Department of Medicine and the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in IBD at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. He earned his PhD from the European School of Molecular Medicine and the University of Milan, and was previously associated with the Tohoku University in Japan and the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Iliev’s laboratory studies the interaction between commensal microbiota and the immune cells at the mucosal surfaces of the body.
Eduardo Donoso
Professor Katrine Whiteson
I am a biochemist interested in human associated microbial and viral communities. I use metagenomics, metabolomics, microbial genetics and ecological statistics to answer questions about how microbes and viruses affect human health. I am interested in understanding how individual and persistent human-associated microbial and viral communities affect health. Infection with a bacterial pathogen, vaccination, immune development and even taking a Tylenol does not occur in a vacuum. Dynamic microbial and viral communities constantly inhabit our bodies, encoding the majority of the unique genes that alter these processes. Resident microbial and viral community composition is unique to each human.
Specifically, I am working to understand the role of persistent microbial colonization in triggering inflammatory episodes in Cystic Fibrosis patients. Understanding microbial interactions and changes in microbial physiology that are associated with changes in patient status may lead to the development of biomarkers to diagnose changes in infection earlier and more specifically.
I am also interested in how phage shape dynamic host-associated microbial communities, and in characterizing the function of the 70% of phage encoded genes with no known function.