I have loved sports and competition for nearly as long as I can remember. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat have always captured my attention. But my love of sport stems not from the winning and losing, but rather the interactions between opponents: the strategies and the gamesmanship; the emotions and the luck. In reflecting on the greatest players and teams, I am often struck that an equally great opponent is required to drive the extraordinary results. When pushed to the brink, we often witness excellence that cannot be achieved through any other means.
In many ways, I have built a research program based on the same premise. The underlying thread of my career has been using highly successful viruses to examine critical aspects of the immune response. By employing virulent respiratory pathogens including coronaviruses (CoV), I have been able to probe and identify host-virus interactions that dictate disease outcomes. These insights extend into immunology, host genetic variation, and viral processes that are critical to understand and ameliorate human disease.
This website describes my previous work at UNC and my current work at UTMB to understand these interactions . Overall, the goal of the Menachery Lab will be to use competition to derive novel insights using equally matched opponents: virulent respiratory viruses and the host immune response.
- Vineet D. Menachery, Ph.D.