Once the study is designed and clinical partner affiliations are reached, the Bose team hopes to draw blood from severely infected, moderately infected and non-infected patients to test for levels of the sensor, which would allow predictions as to how individuals might respond to respiratory viral infections.

"This is a major breakthrough in understanding respiratory virus behavior and innate immune antiviral factors, and provides the basis for innovative therapies to improve host responses to infectious diseases," said Joel Baseman, Ph.D., professor and chairman of microbiology and immunology at the Health Science Center.

Dr. Baseman said microbiology and immunology faculty members in the university's Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences are doing fundamental and translational research that is the basis for the establishment of an airway disease research and vaccine center. The group includes Dr. Bose's co-authors on the NOD2 paper, Peter Dube, Ph.D., and Yan Xiang, Ph.D.

Source: University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio