Dr. Robert Brunham
Provincial Executive Director, BCCDC Scientific Director, UBC CDC Professor of Medicine, UBC
Dr. Robert C. Brunham is the Executive and Scientific Director of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). Dr. Brunham is also a Professor of Medicine at The University of British Columbia. He has over 350 publications and an h-index of 53, as calculated by ISI’s Web of Knowledge. He is internationally regarded as an expert on infectious diseases and well known for his research on Chlamydia, SARS and HIV.
In 2005 Dr. Brunham received the CIHR Partnership Award for exemplifying research excellence by bringing health research communities together. His belief in seeking fundamental understanding of scientific problems while maximizing their benefit to society has been characterized by a career of partnership across the broad breadth of medical biosciences including molecular biology, clinical investigation and public health studies.
In Chlamydia research, Dr. Brunham is a world authority. He has made seminal contributions to defining the clinical features of infection in women, determining the underlying mechanisms of immunity, and discovering protective antigens suitable for vaccine development. He has innovatively analyzed the impact of public health efforts to control Chlamydia and concluded that a vaccine will be essential to success.
Dr. Brunham is also well known for his work in elucidating the SARS genome, defining the characteristic clinical features of SARS as a clinical entity and tracing its distinctive epidemiology to underlying network transmission dynamics.
As well, Dr. Brunham’s contribution to understanding HIV is significant. He determined the major role of chancroid in concentrating accelerated HIV transmission among high-risk groups in Africa and the major role of HLA molecules in HIV resistance and susceptibility.
For more information about Dr. Brunham's Chlamydia research, please click here.
To contact Dr. Brunham, please email him at robert.brunham@bccdc.ca
Collingro A, Tischler P, Weinmaier T, Penz T, Heinz E, Brunham RC, Read TD, Bavoil PM, Sachse K, Kahane S, Friedman MG, Rattei T, Myers GS, Horn M. Unity in variety--the pan-genome of the chlamydiae. Mol Biol Evol. 2011 Dec;28(12):3253-70.
Zoraghi R, Warroll L, See RH, Strangman W, Popplewell WL, Gong H, Samaai T, Swayze RD, Kaur S, Vuckovic M, Finlay BB, Brunham RC, McMaster WR, Davies-Coleman MT, Strynadka NC, Andersen RJ, Reiner NE. MRSA pyruvate kinase as a target for bis-indole alkaloids with antibacterial activities. J Biol Chem. 2011 Oct 26.
Zoraghi R, See RH, Axerio-Cilies P, Kumar NS, Gong H, Moreau A, Hsing M, Kaur S, Swayze RD, Worrall L, Amandoron E, Lian T, Jackson L, Jiang J, Thorson L, Labriere C, Foster L, Brunham RC, McMaster WR, Finlay BB, Strynadka NC, Cherkasov A, Young RN, Reiner NE. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2011 May;55(5):2042-53.
Cherkasov A, Hsing M, Zoraghi R, Foster LJ, See RH, Stoynov N, Jiang J, Kaur S, Lian T, Jackson L, Gong H, Swayze R, Amandoron E, Hormozdiari F, Dao P, Sahinalp C, Santos-Filho O, Axerio-Cilies P, Byler K, McMaster WR, Brunham RC, Finlay BB, Reiner NE. Mapping the protein interaction network in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. J Proteome Res. 2011 Mar 4;10(3):1139-50.
D’Souza C, Kronstad J, Taylor G, Warren R, Yuen M, Hu G, Jung W, Sham A, Kidd S, Tangen K, Lee N, Zeilmaker T, Sawkins J, McVicker G, Shah S, Gnerre S, Griggs A, Zeng Q, Bartlett K, Li W, Wang X, Heitman J, Stajich J, Fraser J, Meyer W, Carter D, Schein J, Krzywinski M, Kwon-Chung K, Varma A, Wang J, Brunham R, Fyfe M, Ouellette B, Siddiqui A, Marra M, Jones S, Holt R, Birren B, Galagan J, Cuomo C. (in press) Genome variation in Cryptococcus gattii, an emerging pathogen of immunocompetent hosts. mBio. 2011 Feb 8;2(1):e00342-10.