Bassel E. Sawaya

Biography

Dr. Bassel E. Sawaya received PhD in Molecular Biology from Rene Descartes University, Paris, France, in 1994. Later he joined INSERM, Strasbourg, France, as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Biology during 1995.

Research Interest

Even in the HAART era where the viral load is below detection levels, the prevalence of HIV-1 associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) remains high due to many reasons such as latent virus reactivation and drugs' inability to efficiently cross the blood brain barrier (BBB). Therefore, it is important to understand the mechanisms leading to neuronal deregulation in HIV-1-infected patients in the HAART era. The lack of productive infection of neurons by HIV-1 suggests that viral and cellular proteins with neurotoxic activities that are released from HIV-1 infected target cells, or reservoirs cells for latent active virus, cause this neuronal deregulation. The viral proteins Tat, Vpr and gp120 have been shown to alter the expression of various important cytokines and inflammatory proteins in infected and uninfected cells. The mechanisms and the cellular factors used by these proteins to cause neuronal damage remain unclear. Therefore, research in the Molecular Studies of Neurodegenerative Diseases (MSND) lab mainly focuses on the identification of these mechanisms utilizing molecular, virological, and cellular approaches to determine the cellular factors used by the viral proteins as well as their interplay with microRNAs to cause neuronal dysfunction.