Research Assistant Professor
maria.t.sanchez@mssm.edu
Research Interests
The goal of my work is to understand the mechanisms involved in the innate immune response against viral infections. I am mainly focused on identifying and characterizing the spatio-temporal events in the RIG-I like receptor pathway that lead to the production of type I IFN, and the mechanisms underlying the inhibition of this response by viruses. I currently work on different projects involving different RNA viruses, combining techniques from microscopy, cell biology, virology and biochemistry. In particular, we have developed a Bimolecular Complementary Assay (BiFC) to characterize the interaction between viral and host cell proteins.
Notable Publications
Aguirre S, Luthra P, Sanchez-Aparicio MT, Maestre AM, Patel J, Lamothe F, Fredericks AC, Tripathi S, Zhu T, Pintado-Silva J, Webb LG, Bernal-Rubio D, Solovyov A, Greenbaum B, Simon V, Basler CF, Mulder LC, García-Sastre A, Fernandez-Sesma A. Dengue virus NS2B protein targets cGAS for degradation and prevents mitochondrial DNA sensing during infection. Nat Microbiol. 2017 Mar 27
Sánchez-Aparicio MT, Garcin D, Rice CM, Kolakofsky D, García-Sastre A, Baum A. Loss of Sendai virus C protein leads to accumulation of RIG-I immunostimulatory defective interfering RNA. J Gen Virol. 2017
Sánchez-Aparicio MT, Ayllón J, Leo-Macias A, Wolff T, García-Sastre A. Subcellular Localizations of RIG-I, TRIM25, and MAVS Complexes. J Virol. 2017 Jan 3
Soonthornvacharin S, Rodriguez-Frandsen A, Zhou Y, Galvez F, Huffmaster NJ, Tripathi S, Balasubramaniam VR, Inoue A, de Castro E, Moulton H, Stein DA, Sánchez-Aparicio MT, De Jesus PD, Nguyen Q, König R, Krogan NJ, García-Sastre A, Yoh SM, Chanda SK. Systems-based analysis of RIG-I-dependent signalling identifies KHSRP as an inhibitor of RIG-I receptor activation. Nat Microbiol. 2017 Mar 1
Versteeg GA, Rajsbaum R, Sánchez-Aparicio MT, Maestre AM, Valdiviezo J, Shi M, Inn KS, Fernandez-Sesma A, Jung J, García-Sastre A. The E3-ligase TRIM family of proteins regulates signaling pathways triggered by innate immune pattern-recognition receptors. Immunity. 2013 Feb 21