MAJOR RESEARCH GOAL
A major goal of Dr Jean’s current antiviral research programs, presently funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), is to increase our understanding of human viral pathogenesis by identifying and studying the enzymes that control the viral and host-cell pathways essential for viral infection and disease progression and by developing protease inhibitors to interrupt these enzymatic pathways.
DR. JEAN’S NEW ANTIVIRAL RESEARCH PROGRAMS AT THE STATE-OF-THE-ART RESEARCH FACILITY FINDER (FACILITY FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND EPIDEMIC RESEARCH)
With the recent establishment of FINDER at UBC, one of the most important facilities of its kind in Canada, Dr. Jean is now expanding his antiviral research program towards the discovery of broad-spectrum antivirals directed at emerging and re-emerging viruses of concern in Canada and around the world (e.g., hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, influenza A virus, and HIV-1). Funded by CFI and BCKDF infrastructure grants and under Dr. Jean’s directorship, FINDER is equipping Canadian and international research collaborators with state-of-the-art resources that allow them to apply the cutting-edge tools of genomics, proteomics, and imaging (“infectomics”) to the study of host-pathogen interactions.
