Enteric viral diseases represent a significant burden for both human and animal health and foodborne illness remains a major public health concern in both developing and developed countries. Despite significant improvement in detection techniques in the past decade over 20% of gastroenteritis cases still cannot be linked to a causative agent. In addition, several enteric viral pathogens are difficult to study because they do not or only poorly replicate in cell culture. Our laboratory is involved in the study of human and animal enteric viral diseases, mainly enteric RNA viruses. We are interested in pathogen discovery and characterization, diagnostic assay development, epidemiological studies, interspecies transmission/zoonosis, cell culture/animal model development, pathogenicity, host virus interactions and host and viral determinants of susceptibility. Currently, the focus is on using the rhesus enteric calicivirus model developed in our laboratory to address relevant questions of enteric calicivirus biology and apply our findings to human noroviruses.
