VandeWoude Lab Research Aims

Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Therapeutics of (primarily Feline) Disease

• Host and pathogen mechanisms contributing to pathogenicity, focused on feline disease

• Features of viral adaptation and evolution relative to cross-species transmission and adaptation

• Host intracellular restriction mechanisms and innate immunity during retroviral infection

• Intra-host disease dynamics relating to viral cell targets and tissue level impacts that predict/effect disease outcome

• Relating peripheral blood cell characteristics to immunological responses and disease outcomes

• Novel approaches for lentiviral vaccine development and therapeutic intervention

• Novel approaches for dermatophytosis diagnosis and therapeutic intervention

• Genetic evaluation of Microsporum canis strains

• Development of innovative approaches and new diagnostic assays for study of host and viral kinetics and pathogenesis

Ecology of Infectious Disease

• Understanding how urbanization, habitat fragmentation and sympatry with domestic cats influence disease dynamics in bobcats and pumas

• Exploring modes of pathogen spillover that result in wildlife exposure to human and domestic animal diseases, and domestic animal and human exposure to wildlife diseases

• Utilization of landscape genetic approaches to evaluate geographic determinants of interactions between subpopulations and cross-species disease transmission events

• Collaborations with federal, state, and academic partners to develop a disease database for free-ranging North American felids (bobcats, pumas, feral domestic cats)

Laboratory Animal Medicine/Husbandry

• Behavioral and physiological impacts of environmental enrichment on laboratory rodents

• Laboratory Animal Disease investigations