Research

Multiomic Analyses to Investigate the Treponema pallidum-Mammalian Host Interface: Treponema pallidum is an obligate human pathogen. A central focus of our research program is determining the reciprocal effect T. pallidum has on host mammalian cells, and mammalian cells have on T. pallidum, at the transcript and protein expression levels. These investigations increase our understanding of correlates of protection against disease and symptom development and identify targets for diagnostic and biomedical interventions.

Development of Biomedical Interventions for Syphilis Prevention:  Rising rates of syphilis around the world indicate the need for development of biomedical interventions to prevent infection. Using a multi-faceted approach, our lab is developing clinically translatable products to interfere with and prevent T. pallidum infection. 

Development of Improved Syphilis Diagnostic Candidates:  Through ongoing research in our lab conducted in partnership with our network of collaborators, we are developing point-of-care direct diagnostic tests for rapid detection of syphilis infections.

Development of a User-Friendly, Living Data Repository for the Syphilis Research Field and Beyond: We are contributing to the development of the Treponema pallidum Protein Database (TPPD), a publicly available, updatable, and interactive database resource for researchers in the T. pallidum field and beyond. This centralized, protein focused database allows researchers to access global pan-proteome sequence alignments among T. pallidum strains and subspecies, and the structural modeling, multi-omic, and T. pallidum protein expression analyses generated in our lab via a user-friendly and dynamic interface. This database was created in collaboration with Dr. Javier Alfaro, Dr. Aleksander Palkowski and colleagues at the University of Calgary. The T. pallidum strain data was generously provided by our collaborators Dr. Nicole Lieberman and team at the University of Washington.  The database can be found at http://tppd.ca/.