Hildebrandt, Gerhard*

Hildebrandt Lab Research

Lab Research Activities: Dr. Hildebrandt’s research interest includes acute and chronic lung injury after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation. Graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) is a condition that is common following an allogeneic stem cell transplant. The donor stem cells used in an allogeneic stem cell transplant can recognize a patient’s healthy tissues as foreign and mount an attack against them; this results in GVHD. There are two types of GVHD: acute GVHD and chronic GVHD. GVHD can be life-threatening and can greatly reduce the quality of life of a survivor. Treatment for GVHD typically includes steroids. However, once a patient stops responding to steroids (steroid-refractory), effective treatment options are limited. B cells and T cells are the immune cell associated with GVHD. We are involved in finding a promising treatment for patients with GVHD and testing the safety of various drugs to find the highest dose that can be given safely to prevent and treat GVHD.
We are extending our study to study lung complications during GVHD. Lung injury after allogeneic (allo) hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) significantly contributes to morbidity and mortality after transplant. Our ongoing microbiome study focuses on analyzing the differential bacterial community relying on 16S rRNA gene sequencing (Mi sequencing) on the lung samples. This requires high performance computer to utilize computational methods data analysis.

The role of the lung microbiome in acute and chronic lung injury after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation

Personnel:

Principal Investigator: Gerhard Hildebrandt
Sub-Investigator: Senthilnathan Palaniyandi

Students

Reena Kumari, Postdoc
Xin Liu,
Nashwan Jabbour

Software:

FASTQC
Mothur
R
Tree view
Fastx-toolkit

Publications:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Gerhard+Hildebrandt%5BAuthor%5D