Research Interest

The overall research interest is to understand the pathogenesis of vector-borne human disease, such as Zika and Dengue virus infection. The main theme of the research focus is to understand the pathogenesis of disease development during viral infections and the innate host response to these infections. Dissecting the dynamic interactions between viruses and a susceptible host factor, which may result in a dire consequence, is the methodological approach to achieve the goal. Special interesting is on the pathogenic role of bone marrow in dengue virusinfection, which is largely unexplored in spite of observations that the involvement of bone marrow in dengue virus infection is very early and that cells derived from bone marrow are much more permissive for dengue virus. As such, the research is more focus on the consequences of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells upon exposure to dengue virus, including cytokines production, signaling involving in stem cells, and manipulation of differentiation of stem cells triggered by dengue virus infection. The approaches include but not limited to in vivo human patient studies, ex vivo bone marrow and umbilical cord blood as well as in vitro model cellinvestigations.

Research field:

• Emerging Infectious Disease,
• hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells,
• Virology,
• Viral Pathogenesis and
• Hematology