Alexander L. Greninger

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Alexander L. Greninger is assistant director of the UW Medicine Clinical Virology Laboratory, director of the Retrovirology/Clinical Trials Laboratory, and the Larry Corey Endowed professor of Laboratory Medicine. His research is focused on genomic and proteomic characterization of a variety of human viruses and bacteria, with a focus on respiratory viruses and human herpesviruses.

Contents

Education

Greninger earned his M.D. and Ph.D., from UC San Francisco and his M.Phil. in Epidemiology from Cambridge in England, and his M.S. in Immunology, B.A. in International Relations, and B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford. [1]

Career

Greninger helped in facilitating the first SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic test outside CDC or public laboratories. He was nominated to the Power List of 2020 by The Pathologist. [2] On March 2, 2020, the UW Medicine Clinical Virology Lab received federal Emergency Use Authorization to use their RT-PCR test as a diagnostic tool for UW Medicine patients. By winter of 2020, the UW Medicine Clinical Virology Lab went from three PCR machines to more than 30 high-volume machines. The lab worked with the School of Medicine to secure equipment and space. The lab had tested over 4 million nasal swabs. [3] Alongside UW Medicine's head of virology, Alex Greninger and Keith Jerome were named Innovators of the Year 2020 by the University of Washington School of Medicine for their foresight and innovation in developing one of the first tests in the country that detects COVID-19. [4] [5]

Greninger's laboratory in South Lake Union's neighborhood of Seattle, WA at the University of Washington School of Medicine focuses on understanding viruses using a wide range of techniques including next-generation sequencing, culture models and screens, and biochemical/biophysical characterization of viral gene products. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Awards

Greninger received the 2024 ASM Early Career Clinical Microbiology Research Award. [11] He was recognized at the 11th International Conference on HHV-6 & 7, for his work in the comparative, genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic re-annotation of HHV-6A/B, as well as his analysis of the heterogeneity, large origin tandem repeats and interspecies recombination in HHV-6A/B reference strains. Additionally, he uploaded over six dozen new genome sequences, expanding the publicly available sequences for HHV-6A/B. [12]

He also received the Young Investigator Award by PASCV in 2017, Churchill Scholar for study at Cambridge University in 2004, Marco Escobar Award, American Society of Microbiology in 2016, was named to American Society of Clinical Pathologists "40 under 40" in 2017, the Strandjord-Clayson Award in 2018, and was named president, Associated Students of University of California-San Francisco during his Medical Scientist Training.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

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Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, their interaction with host organism physiology and immunity, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pathology</span> Study of the causes and effects of disease or injury, and how they arise

Pathology is the study of disease and injury. The word pathology also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in the context of modern medical treatment, the term is often used in a narrower fashion to refer to processes and tests that fall within the contemporary medical field of "general pathology", an area that includes a number of distinct but inter-related medical specialties that diagnose disease, mostly through analysis of tissue and human cell samples. Idiomatically, "a pathology" may also refer to the predicted or actual progression of particular diseases, and the affix pathy is sometimes used to indicate a state of disease in cases of both physical ailment and psychological conditions. A physician practicing pathology is called a pathologist.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Medical laboratory scientist</span> Medical professional who works in the laboratory

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Medical microbiology</span> Branch of medical science

Medical microbiology, the large subset of microbiology that is applied to medicine, is a branch of medical science concerned with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. In addition, this field of science studies various clinical applications of microbes for the improvement of health. There are four kinds of microorganisms that cause infectious disease: bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses, and one type of infectious protein called prion.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Molecular diagnostics</span> Collection of techniques used to analyze biological markers in the genome and proteome

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Carey-Ann Burnham is a clinical microbiologist, and a professor of Pathology and Immunology, Molecular Microbiology, Pediatrics and Medicine in Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. She is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

Keith R. Jerome is an American virologist whose research focuses on viruses such as herpes simplex, HIV and hepatitis B that persist in their hosts. He published on the first known case of COVID-19 in the United States detecting SARS-CoV-2 in Washington State and helped forge the nation's COVID-19 testing. In 2021, Jerome and Alexander Greninger shared the Washington Innovator of the Year award for developing the laboratory based assay for detecting COVID-19. He was senior author on a research article published in Science describing the cryptic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 alongside Trevor Bedford, Alexander Greninger, Jay Shendure, and Helen Chu. Regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 he reported that the live market in Wuhan was more likely than a lab leak of the virus.

References

  1. ↑ "UW DLMP".
  2. ↑ "Alex Greninger". The Pathologist.
  3. ↑ Weiland, Noah; Thomas, Katie (March 13, 2020). "Trump Administration Moves to Speed Coronavirus Testing". The New York Times– via NYTimes.com.
  4. ↑ "Innovator of the Year awarded to directors of virology lab". 28 April 2021.
  5. ↑ Thomas, Katie; Kliff, Sarah; Bogel-Burroughs, Nicholas (March 7, 2020). "With Test Kits in Short Supply, Health Officials Sound Alarms". The New York Times– via NYTimes.com.
  6. ↑ "Greninger Lab".
  7. ↑ Jewett, Christina (January 3, 2022). "With no way to identify Omicron and Delta patients, treatment decisions are vexing doctors". The New York Times– via NYTimes.com.
  8. ↑ "Why this surge is complicating physicians' treatment decisions". www.beckershospitalreview.com. 3 January 2022.
  9. ↑ "Which COVID variant does this patient have? U.S. doctors struggle with treatment decisions". The Seattle Times. January 4, 2022.
  10. ↑ "Coexisting with the Coronavirus". The New Yorker. July 21, 2021.
  11. ↑ "2024 ASM Early Career Clinical Microbiology Research Awardee".
  12. ↑ "Alexander Greninger awarded the Koichi Yamanishi Young Investigator Award for Basic Science | HHV-6 Foundation | HHV-6 Disease Information for Patients, Clinicians, and Researchers | Apply for a Grant". hhv-6foundation.org.
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