Marcus Kaul's Research Focus
HIV/AIDS, Inflammatory/Autoimmune Disease, HIV-Associated Dementia
The Kaul laboratory studies how infections and the responding immune system can induce inflammation and degenerative diseases at the cellular and molecular level. Currently, a major focus of the lab's work is the role of chemokines and inflammatory cytokines and their receptors in the promotion or prevention of HIV-associated neurodegeneration and dementia, a severe degenerative disease with cognitive and motor dysfunction that is also known as NeuroAIDS or AIDS dementia.
The lab's major research interests are:
1. Molecular mechanisms and models of inflammatory, infectious and degenerative pathologies, such as HIV-1 disease and in particular HIV-associated dementia: mechanisms of neuronal injury and death, and opposing cytoprotective effects of chemokines, cytokines, and anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective drugs. Signal transduction pathways in neuroinflammation, neurotoxicity and protection.
2. Proteomic analysis and search for mechanisms, biomarkers and therapeutic targets of infectious pathologies, inflammation and degenerative diseases, in particular HIV-associated dementia, using in vitro and in vivo models, and CSF, serum, cells and post mortem tissue specimens from patients.
3. Physiology and pathophysiology of chemokines, cytokines and complement components and their receptors in the immune and central nervous system.
4. Differentiation and function of cells of the nervous and the immune system with particular consideration of chronic inflammatory and degenerative processes and diseases.
About Marcus Kaul
Experience
Marcus Kaul received his Ph.D. in the departments of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany. He was a member of the scientific staff and an acting research project manager in the department of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene at the University of Mainz before he worked as a postdoctoral fellow first at Harvard Medical School and then at Sanford-Burnham. Here he was appointed as a Research Assistant Professor in the Center for Neuroscience and Aging Research in 2001. In December 2006, he accepted a position as Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and in June 2007 he was recruited as an Assistant Professor to the Infectious and Inflammatory Disease Center at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute.
|
|