Vikram Misra

Vikram Misra:
Biography and Research Interests:

Vikram Misra is a professor of Microbiology at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, with an associate appointment in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the College of Medicine. He is the director of the University of Saskatchewan One Health initiatives and the Chair of the NSERC CREATE-funded Integrated Training Program in Infectious Diseases, Food Safety and Public Policy (ITraP).

Vikram completed his undergraduate training and obtained a PhD in Medical Microbiology from the University of British Columbia. Following his appointment to the faculty of the University of Saskatchewan, Vikram worked on sabbatical leaves with Dr. Michael Smith at the Univ. of B.C., The Marie Curie Cancer Research Institute in the U.K. and Public Health Agency of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory.

Vikram’s research group has long had an interest in exploring how stress alters the virus-host relationship. Collaborative work with Dr. Valarie Verge has resulted in demonstrating that key neuronal proteins, that the herpes simplex virus uses to sense stress and as cues for reactivation, play an important role in sensing and repairing nerve damage. Vikram’s research group – The Bat Zoonoses Laboratory – is currently exploring how stress alters the bat-virus relationship leading to spillover of viruses that cause diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Ebola, from bats to people.