The Scripps NeuroAIDS Preclinical Studies (SNAPS) is a multidisciplinary center supporting biomedical research relevant to neuroAIDS. In HIV infection, the HIV-1 -associated cognitive/motor disorder, also known as the AIDS dementia complex or neuroAIDS, occurs in approximately one-third of patients. Symptoms range from a """"""""minor"""""""" disorder, affecting 25% of individuals, to dementia, affecting 15 to 20% of those with AIDS. Although recent therapeutic advances have reduced mortality from HIV, most of these agents do not show significant penetration of the blood-brain barrier (BBS). The central nervous system (CNS) may remain a reservoir as well as suffer continued damage over the treatment-prolonged course of infection. The etiology of the HIV-induced CNS alterations is unknown. One of our working hypotheses are that viral infection of the brain, occurring via a """"""""Trojan horse"""""""" mechanism of infected macrophages trafficking to the brain initiates a sequence of events leading to neuronal dysfunction. However we believe that neurons, at least early, are not irreversibly damaged by a virus-induced pathological cascade. Thus HIV-induced CNS damage may be amenable to timely therapy to prevent the chronic consequence of CNS dysfunction. Using a multisystem approaches, the SNAPS center research aims to investigate the host and viral factors leading to CNS dysfunction, and investigate ways to prevent or ameliorate these untoward effects. The SNAPS center brings together scientists with different expertise from proteomic, genomic and physiology. The Systems Biology and Integrative Network Core (SBINC) aims to develop a suite of bioinformatics tools for extracting pathway models from molecular interaction networks using a system of complex queries. Because the database query is a well-established means of extracting information from large bioinformatics databases, it may serve as a key concept for bringing complex network operations, such as pathway construction and simulation, to the SNAPS center at large. Thus helping the SNAPS scientists to better query their large highthroughput dataset and to utilize a integrative system approach to better characterize this complex neuropathology.
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