Overview
Our lab is focused on defining the diagnosis, prevention and treatment strategies for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza, and other respiratory viruses including the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The main focus of our lab currently is managing the clinical infrastructure for the Seattle Flu Study and SCAN, a city-wide surveillance initiative to study the transmission of respiratory viruses through molecular diagnostics and genome sequencing with a focus on households and homeless shelters, and running HAARVI, a clinical study monitoring the longitudinal progress of COVID-19 disease in a large cohort of adults in the Seattle region.
The lab is also working to develop neutralizing antibody assays to analyze serum and breast milk and evaluate the role of humoral and cellular immunity in protection against respiratory viruses in pregnant women and infants. Our previous work includes describing transmission patterns of RSV, rhinovirus, and human metapneumovirus, the epidemiology and adverse birth outcomes associated with respiratory viral pneumonia in pregnant women, and the kinetics of transplacental RSV antibody transfer and decay in infants.
Principal investigator
Diseases we study