Guy Zimmerman

BIOGRAPHY

RESEARCH:

Our research group, which includes physicians and Ph.D. scientists, studies fundamental mechanisms of infectious, inflammatory and thrombotic diseases. These include syndromes of impaired host defense, such as the leukocyte adhesion deficiencies, and conditions in which unregulated inflammatory or thrombotic responses contribute to pathogenesis and key complications. Some of the latter disorders include acute respiratory distress syndrome, asthma and other inflammatory airway diseases, and atherosclerosis and its inflammatory and thrombotic complications. Our work is also relevant to other human diseases including cancer. Our approach is to identify and characterize key molecular events using cell biology strategies, in vitro models, and in vitro and in vivo genetic approaches that include knockout mice. Signaling events in vascular and inflammatory cells that become dysregulated in disease is an ongoing focus in our group, and gene regulation is a ! particular area of current emphasis. Our studies include mechanisms of signaling to transcriptional events and utilize microarray analysis and other state-of-the-art approaches. We are also investigating signaling to post-transcriptional checkpoints ­ particularly, translational control mechanisms - that regulate the flow of genetic information in inflammatory and thrombotic cells. Our research group includes students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty members from several departments, so the exposure of students who do summer research rotations is quite broad. Summer students identify a focused question of interest in discussions of ongoing projects and are then expected to pursue it in an independent fashion under direction of a faculty member and/or senior research trainee. The opportunity for clinical studies and/or analysis of patient samples is available in several projects.