This compilation of webinars touch on the various human diseases are most commonly attributed to the subject matter of microbiology, as well as the many microbes that are also responsible for numerous beneficial processes.
Lessons around leveraging high-complexity next-generation sequencing tests for precision infectious disease discovery to guide patient treatment and improve health outcomes. Learning Objecti...
Microbiome sequencing data are known to be biased; the measured taxa relative abundances can be systematically distorted from their true values at every step in the experimental/analysis wor...
Epidemics are occurring at an increasing pace and scale. Our laboratory group has developed platform technologies for discovery of broad and potent neutralizing antibodies for many emerging...
The immune system evolved to protect us against pathogen invasion and to maintain tissue homeostasis. Fundamental for these functions are the interferons (IFNs), a group of cytokines that be...
Saliva serves as a reservoir for the upper aerodigestive tract (UADT). Saliva collection is non-invasive, convenient, and amenable to self-collection. Thus, saliva is an ideal resource for l...
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses an unprecedented challenge for public health, which is caused by infection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV...
Globally, women are disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infections (STI) including HIV. The immune system of the female reproductive tract (FRT) balances the unique role of p...
In this session, a review of the impact of COVID-19 on the Forensic Science Program at the University of Toronto will be explored. Challenges for both undergraduate and graduate education wi...
Plant-infecting viruses cause significant losses to agriculture, including to staple crops such as wheat, maize, and rice. Preventing and managing endemic and emerging plant diseases is an o...
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that is caused by the immune system’s inability to respond appropriately to an infection. How sepsis can change the gut microbiome in ways that a...
Antibiotics have radically transformed our world by making previously incurable illnesses treatable. Millions of lives have been saved and our wellbeing significantly improved as a result. Th...
Early detection is critical for prompt and effective treatment of acute infectious diseases. For tick-borne diseases (TBD), the lack of accurate early diagnosis can result in delayed treatme...
The encapsulated fungus Cryptococcus neoformans is the most common cause of fungal meningitis, with the highest rate of cryptococcosis found in AIDS patients. Despite antifungal treatment, c...
Influenza severity is determined by the interplay between the virus and the host response. Previously, we identified a three-pronged lung gene expression signature that predicted severe infl...
Highly efficacious vaccines against COVD-19 have been generated in a record time, and allowed a great impact in preventing severe disease due to SARS-CoV-2 infection in vaccinated individual...
Flow cytometry is a powerful technology for investigating questions related to the immune response and its sustenance, as well as detailed mechanisms of COVID-19. Simplified cell-based and b...
Antimicrobial resistance is an important and pressing challenge for global human health. Several obstacles in understanding, diagnosing, and treating antimicrobial resistance limit our abili...
Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) represent the most successful class of active targeting drug-delivery systems, however, despite the increasing number of FDA approvals treatment-related adver...
For the past years, my laboratory has been working on microfluidic devices to enable the analysis of single cells. Our technology of choice has been droplet microfluidics that encapsulates s...
Self-amplifying RNA replicons are promising candidates for next generation vaccines against human coronaviruses with pandemic potential. Self-amplification of RNAs in host cells generates mo...
Droplet generators are at the heart of many microfluidic devices developed for life science applications but are difficult to tailor to each specific application. The high fabrication costs,...
Helicobacter pylori is the primary cause of 78% of gastric cancer cases, providing an opportunity to prevent cancer by controlling a single bacterial pathogen within the complex gastric micr...
For centuries, humans have become infected with endemic circulating Coronaviruses (hCoV), typically repeatedly throughout life. To understand how these respiratory infections establish CD4 T...
Microfluidic technologies have opened up new possibilities for ultra-low volume, and ultrafast assays, compared to bulk-scale counterparts. We have been focused on developing new tools for d...
A significant increase in agricultural production is needed to meet the demand for food to feed the expected ~10 billion people by 2050. This increased agricultural output will also require...
Human skin is characterized by a limited number of phyla including, Actinomycetota, Bacillota and Pseudomonadota. In particular, Staphylococcus (Bacillota) and Corynebacterium (Actinomycetot...
Emerging viruses like SARS, SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV, Hendra, Nipah, West Nile, sin nombre, LuJo, MERS, Powassan, dengue, chikungunya, zika, Ebola, and Marburg pose a growing threat to public he...