Victor DeFilippis

Areas Victor DeFilippis is Knowledgeable in:

Techniques Victor DeFilippis Uses:

Victor DeFilippis's Problem Solving Skills:

1. Molecular problem solving
2. Grant writing
3. Laboratory management
4. Molecular biology
5. Scientific experimental design, execution, and analysis
6. Hypothesis formulation and testing

Victor DeFilippis's Problem Solving Experience:

1. 4) A great deal of infectious disease research involves work in high containment Biosafety level 3 and 4 laboratories. These highly regulated environments require numerous extra precautions with regard to use of chemical and physical resources especially radioactivity. To circumvent this inconvenience I adapted novel nonradioactive techniques for examination of RNA transcription and protein translation for use in in vitro infectious disease research.
2. 3) I have devised numerous diverse nontraditional strategies to knock out normal gene functions in cells in vitro. This includes stable overexpression of dominant negative mutants and natural viral inhibitors. These methods have made available novel methods of examining the functions of genes and cellular pathways.
3. 1) I have modified and adapted numerous DNA expression and viral vectors. This has allowed for the construction of numerous stable human and animal cell lines that express foreign proteins in a conditional manner (e.g. following addition of tetracycline). This platform has greatly facilitated the molecular investigation of proteins of interest in their normal cellular context.
4. 2) I have constructed multiple human cell lines that can be used as in vitro reporters that respond to either the presence of specific exogenous cytokines (e.g. interferon) or to identify compounds that stimulate the release of these compounds from the cells themselves. These cells have been used for many biological assays including screening of a library of 50,000 small molecules to identify many that exhibit antimicrobial properties.