Dr. Brasier’s research focuses on how cellular signaling pathways induce innate inflammation, a process associated with many chronic diseases, such as asthma, heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and cancer. His work has advanced the understanding, at the cellular level, how innate signaling is activated and the intracellular signaling pathways involved. In particular, his work has focused on the NFκB transcription factor, a master regulator of inflammation whose activation results in expression of gene regulatory networks controlling tissue inflammation and cell state changes. His pioneering work has applied advanced bioinformatics to integrate information from high- throughput gene and protein expression studies to generate novel mechanistic insights about this pathway. These studies have extended our understanding of the actions and regulation of NFκB to its role in a unique regulatory process known as transcriptional elongation. His work is informing translational research strategies to reduce viral induced inflammation, airway remodeling, and inflammatory bowel disease. Additional areas of investigation include the applications of proteomics to discover novel predictive biomarkers in patients with inflammatory disease to diagnose subtypes of disease, follow progression and predict treatment outcome as a first step towards personalized medicine.
