JC Wilt Infectious
Diseases Research Center
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Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
ABOUT THE LAB
Our lab is located in the JC Wilt Infectious Diseases Research Centre, part of the National Microbiology Laboratories. We are a diverse team of government and academic researchers working together to combat infectious diseases. We work closely with local researchers at the University of Manitoba and have active collaborations across North America, Europe and Africa. Our mission is to employ state-of-the-art molecular and computational tools to uncover novel mechanisms for prevention and treatment of infectious disease.
Lab Members
Paul McLaren - Principal Investigator
Dr. McLaren is an early career researcher with the JC Wilt Infectious Diseases Research Center and an adjunct professor at the University of Manitoba. His research focus is understanding HIV host-pathogen interaction using a systems biology approach (including genomics, transcriptomics and microbiome studies).
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Jeff Tuff - Technician
Jeff is a laboratory technician at the National Laboratory for HIV Genetics. He has been heavily involved in studying how human genetics can influence disease susceptibility and progression in individuals from the CAPRISA-004 trials.
David Tang - Technician
Dave is a laboratory technician at the National Laboratory for HIV Genetics. His research currently focuses on generation of CRISPR-Cas9 knockouts of viral host dependency factors in cell lines and the effect on viral infection/pathogenesis.
Riley Tough - PhD Candidate
Riley is a fourth year PhD student working on identifying host genetic variants which impact HIV-1 set-point viral load in individuals of African Ancestry. His work focuses on studying the impact of genetic variants on gene expression, epigenetic annotations, and protein expression using ex vivo and computational analysis.
Shanelle Gingras- PhD Student
Shanelle is a third year PhD student studying genetic regulation of inflammatory cells within a cohort of women from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her project focuses on understanding differential gene expression between women with or without inflammation who did or did not acquire HIV.
Past Members
Abraham Awada - Summer Student
Mr. Awada is a first-time summer student focusing on idenifing HIV-1 host dependency factors using CRISPR single-base editing.