Elizabeth E. Brown PhD, MPH

Dr. Brown received her PhD in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University. She subsequently completed two fellowships at the National Institutes of Health (NIH); the first in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the second, in the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity (LGD), Section of Immunogenetics and Molecular Epidemiology. Dr. Brown joined the faculty at UAB in 2006. Her primary research areas are immunogenetics and molecular epidemiology.

Faculty

- Epidemiology
- Medicine
- Microbiology
- Interdisciplinary Genetics Graduate Program

Research Interests

Using models of autoimmunity and immune-suppression, the work in our laboratory is targeted toward understanding the natural history of viral infections and aberrant immune function common to inflammatory-mediated chronic diseases. Of particular interest is the genetic basis of select host-pathogen interactions, virally-associated cancers, select lymphomas, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and systemic vasculitis, each with underlying B cell pathologies. Within this purview, we use a multi-disciplinary functional genomics approach to explore pathways involved in chronic immune perturbation, B cell homeostasis, cytokine signaling as modifiers of disease, mucosal immunity and immune senescence as markers of complex disease susceptibility, morbidity and mortality. The goal of this research is to identify and validate molecular biomarkers of clinical outcomes, which may be used to target high-risk populations to prevent or reduce disease burden.

Selected Research Projects