My primary interest involves the coordination of biomedical research utilizing our NIH-supported nonhuman primate resource, the Vervet Research Colony (VRC). The VRC is a unique national research resource with the mandate to provide animals, samples, tissues, data and expertise necessary to facilitate biomedical and translational research using vervets/African green monkeys. With numerous collaborators, I have participated in a wide-range of multi-categorical research projects utilizing nonhuman primate models of human disease.
Recent studies have focused such diverse research areas as development of novel PET tracers, vitamin D heritability, neonatal influenza vaccine efficacy, animal models of Alzheimer’s disease, whole genome sequencing, maternal influences on obesity and gene-by-diet effects on cardiometabolism, among others.