Chand, Hitendra

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Chand Lab

overview

  • Hitendra Chand serves as an Associate Professor (tenure-track) and leads the Chand laboratory. The Chand lab at HWCOM specializes in characterizing innate immune responses to recurring environmental exposures - “the experiments of nature,” and the pathophysiologies leading to debilitating diseases like allergic asthma and COPD which are exacerbated by viral infections such as HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2.

    Prior to FIU, Chand conducted research in respiratory biology at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, NM. He investigated the pathophysiology following environmental exposures to tobacco smoke, allergens, and viruses, and the molecular mechanisms involved in the programmed cell death pathways and airway inflammatory responses.

    During his postdoctoral training at the University of New Mexico Health Science Center, his research helped identify the role of proteinase inhibitors in blood coagulation biochemistry and in cancer biology. At the Center for Infectious Diseases and Immunology at UNM School of Medicine, Chand worked on biology-based studies to understand the immunobiology of allergic asthma and the pathogenesis of highly contagious respiratory infections requiring BSL4/ABSL4 containment.

research interests

  • Innate immunity: The Chand lab’s primary research involves understanding the mechanisms of pulmonary and systemic inflammation and tissue remodeling in respiratory and aging-associated diseases. His lab recently reported that airway epithelium preserves an ‘innate memory’ to help augment a rapid and “trained immune response” following the environmental exposures.

    Gene-Environment interactions: The interplay of host genetic factors with the environmental toxicants and microbial pathogens are being studied within the following high-priority projects:

    Coding and Noncoding Transcripts in Inflammatory Responses
    Mitochondrial Dynamics, Tobacco Products (E-Cigs),and Nanomedicine
    Interaction of HIV, Tobacco Smoke, and Opioids at the Lung-Brain Axis
    Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Innate Mucosal Immunity
    Pathophysiology of HIV, COPD, and Alzheimer’s Disease

selected publications

full name

  • Hitendra Chand

visualizations

Recent publications and grants in Scholars@FIU

publication subject areas

Citation index-derived subject areas the researcher has published in