Elsje Pienaar

Elsje Pienaar Profile Picture

Assistant Professor

Contact Info:

epienaar@purdue.edu
765-494-4682
MJIS2035

Training Group(s):
Computational and Systems Biology

Active Mentor - currently hosting PULSe students for laboratory rotations and recruiting PULSe students into the laboratory; serves on preliminary exam committees

Current Research Interests:

Our systems pharmacology approach constructs multi-scale, hybrid computational models that describe host immune, pathogen and drug dynamics within an infected patient. In close collaborations with experimentalists, we integrate these computational models with multiple in vitro and in vivo datasets to: predict drug efficacy, optimize treatment, identify new drug targets, and inform future experiments; all in the context of complex host-pathogen-drug interactions.

Selected Publications:

Cicchese J, Pienaar E, Kirschner D, Linderman JJ. Applying optimization algorithms to tuberculosis antibiotic treatment regimens. Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering. Aug 2017. DOI: 10.1007/s12195-017-0507-6.

Kirschner DE, Pienaar E, Marino S, Linderman JJ . A review of computational model contributions to our understanding of M. tuberculosis within-host infection and treatment. Current Opinion in Systems Biology. 2017; 3:170-185.

Pienaar E, Sarathy J, Prideaux B, Dartois V, Kirschner DE and Linderman JJ. Systems Pharmacology Evaluation of Fluoroquinolone Spatial Distribution And Efficacy In Tuberculosis Granulomas. PLoS Computational Biology. 2017;13(8):e1005650.

Pienaar E, Matern W, Linderman JJ, Bader JS, Kirschner DE. Multi-scale model of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection maps metabolite and gene perturbations to granuloma sterilization predictions. Infection and Immunity. 2016;84(5):1650.

Pienaar E, Dartois V, Linderman JJ, Kirschner DE. In silico evaluation and exploration of antibiotic tuberculosis treatment regimens. BMC Systems Biology. 2015;9:79.

Linderman JJ, Cilfone N, Pienaar E, Gong C, and Kirschner DE. A Multi-scale Approach to Designing Therapeutics for Tuberculosis. Integrative biology. 2015; 7:591-609.

Cilfone N, Pienaar E, Thurber GM, Kirschner DE, Linderman JJ. Systems pharmacology approach towards the design of inhaled formulations of rifampicin and isoniazid for treatment of tuberculosis. CPT Pharmacometrics Syst Pharmacol. 2015;4:e22.

Pienaar E, Cilfone NA, Lin PL, Dartois V, Mattila JT, Butler JR, Flynn JL, Kirschner DE, Linderman JJ. A computational tool integrating host immunity with antibiotic dynamics to study tuberculosis treatment. J Theor Biol. 2015;367:166-179.

Raffetseder J*, Pienaar E*, Blomgran R, Eklund D, Patcha Brodin V, Andersson H, Stendahl O, Welin A, Lerm M. Replication Rates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Human Macrophages Do Not Correlate with Mycobacterial Antibiotic Susceptibility. PLoS One. 2014;9(11):e112426. *: Shared first authorship.

Pienaar E, Lerm M. A Mathematical Model of the Initial Interaction between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Macrophages. J Theor Biol. 2014; 342:23-32.

  • Faculty Profile

Ernest C. Young Hall, Room 170 | 155  S. Grant Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2114 | 765-494-2600

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