Research Projects

Mosquito-borne flaviviruses like Dengue and Zika cause severe illnesses with significant morbidity and mortality. Despite commercial support, vaccine development has been slow, and no antiflaviviral agent is currently available. Understanding the mechanism of immunomodulation by flavivirus is crucial for developing novel therapeutics and vaccines. NK cells rapidly expand and become activated in the response against different flavivirus infections, limiting viral replication. Humans with compromised NK cell function suffer from frequent or life-threatening viral infections. The study proposes studying NK cells and T-cell responses across the entire DENV and ZIKV proteome and identifying host factors related to immunomodulation by flavivirus. The study will also investigate whether there is a crosstalk between NK cells and T cells and its possible implications in flavivirus infections.