Overview
Introduction
The Pathology Advanced Translational Research Unit (PATRU) integrates current efforts in basic research and validated pre-clinical models and clinical trials in Infection Diseases, Immunotherapy of Cancer and autoimmune diseases. The unit is a world-class academic multidisciplinary structure focused on the development, implementation, and integration of systems immunology efforts at Emory University.
The unit connects basic science to systems biology, and its major focus is on areas of translational significance. It develops faculty and programmatic resources in Systems Immunology and enables discovery science providing a foundation to develop hypothesis-driven grant-supported research programs, to develop clinical and public health interventions.
Goals
PATRU represents a cutting-edge research area of growing importance. It develops modern trends in research (immunology, HIV, HCV, cell & molecular biology, systems immunology and infectious diseases, systems biology approaches, big data, informatics), and it addresses one of the areas of the School of Medicine's strategic plan, Immunity. Moreover, its goals intersect with other important strategic research aims, including immunotherapy for cancer and other diseases.
The unit would enable discovery science to provide the foundation to develop hypothesis-driven grant-supported research programs to develop clinical and public health interventions.
Objectives
- Our goal is to identify basic understanding and novelty that underline:
- Successful and failed responses to licensed and experimental vaccines
- Successful and failed responses to immune-based therapies in cancer and chronic viral diseases
- Antibody-mediated therapies
- Cell-based therapies
- Cytokine-based therapies
- Immune modulators (mTOR, Jak/Stat inhibitors, epigenetic modifiers)
- Our goal is also to identify predictors of good and bad outcomes in prophylactic and therapeutic immune interventions.
- Our medium-term goal is to generate novel and more efficacious immune interventions.