James Pipas
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Microbiology & Immunology
Almost everyone carries BK polyomavirus (BKV), a small DNA virus that stays in the body for life and usually causes no symptoms. In people with weakened immune systems, especially transplant recipients, the virus can multiply heavily and damage the kidneys and urinary tract, and patients shed large amounts of virus in urine.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
Genetics
- Topics
BK polyomavirus
polyomaviridae
large T antigen
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Test whether BKV establishes latency in renal proximal tubule epithelia, the kidney tubule cells it infects best, by comparing viral gene expression in sparse versus growth-arrested dense cultures.
- Determine how many cultured cells harbor BKV genomes and how many viral genomes each cell carries during repressed, low-level persistent infection.
- Test the hypothesis that the level of large T antigen (LT) is the switch between latency and productive infection, using the 5As BKV mutant that expresses greatly elevated LT and grows to higher titer.
- Identify the mechanisms that drive LT overexpression and the factors that, at low LT levels, repress viral gene expression or reduce LT stability.
More about the research
Two unknowns limit therapy design: where the virus resides in healthy people, and what flips it from quiet persistence to active, high-level production of new virus.
Why it matters
BKV causes serious kidney disease in immunosuppressed patients, particularly transplant recipients, and there are no good ways to block the burst of virus production that drives it. Identifying the cells that harbor the quiet virus and the molecular switch, centered on the large T antigen, that reactivates it could reveal points where a drug might keep the infection silent and prevent BKV-associated nephropathy.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yuan Chang
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Microbiology & Immunology
Visualize single molecules of Merkel cell polyomavirus Large T protein binding, assembling and starting to unwind viral DNA, using the LUMICKS C-Trap optical tweezers instrument.
David Morgens
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport, LA·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Identify mutations in KSHV's DNA replication proteins that block late gene expression but still allow viral DNA copying, using a high-throughput method for making and testing many viral mutants.
Jeffrey Beamish
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research
Define the genes that the transcription factor Pax8 controls in kidney proximal tubule cells before and after ischemic injury, using new in vivo and in vitro models of normal and regenerating epithelium.
The school
University of Pittsburgh: 83 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 403 research doctorates a year.
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