Ilyse Darwish

Ilyse Darwish is a Master of Science Candidate at Sandra A. Rotman Laboratories, McLaughlin Rotman Centre for Global Health within the Translational Research Pillar.

In the event of an influenza pandemic, most people will not have access to affordable and available supplies of vaccine. Resistance to the most widely stockpiled antiviral agents has recently emerged therefore necessitating alternate therapeutic management strategies. Immunomodulators such as bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells
(MSCs) have been shown to dampen the host inflammatory response in acute lung injury (ALI), which has been associated with influenza A infected patient mortality. Ilyse is interested in using these cells to treat influenza infection which may lead to prolonged patient survival. She is also interested in the use of nitric oxide as a novel influenza antiviral therapy.