Dr Moorthy is a clinician-scientist with an overarching interest in the epidemiology and virology of respiratory viruses in children with particular focus on burden, transmission dynamics, vaccine response and viral genomics. As a trained virologist with a background in laboratory medicine, he has extensive experience in viral diagnostics including classical and molecular virology (PCR, sequencing and reverse genetics) and immunology (serology and T&B-cell immunophenotyping).
He has been conducting ARI surveillance using frontline molecular tools for influenza and other respiratory viruses in hospitalized patients at CMC for over a decade as well as on respiratory viruses in India and SE Asia. He has established capacity for pathogen genomics (NGS for influenza and respiratory viruses) to study virus evolution and transmission at varying spatio-temporal scales. He currently leads a large-scale RSV genomics study in Vellore using NGS methods.
He is a member of the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response (CEIRR) network of NIAID, USA leading a conducting cohort study on B-cell responses to influenza vaccine in children. He is the CMC-lead for a multi-center study birth cohort to study the burden of ARI among children in India.
Publications
1. Mahalingam G, Periyasami Y, Arjunan P, Subaschandrabose RK, Mathivanan TV, Mathew RS, Devi RKT, Premkumar PS, Muliyil J, Srivastava A, Moorthy M, Marepally S. 2023. Omicron infection increases IgG binding to spike protein of predecessor variants. J Med Virol 95:e28419.
2. Virk RK, Jayakumar J, Mendenhall IH, Moorthy M, Lam P, Linster M, Lim J, Lin C, Oon LLE, Lee HK, Koay ESC, Vijaykrishna D, Smith GJD, Su YCF. 2020. Divergent evolutionary trajectories of influenza B viruses underlie their contemporaneous epidemic activity. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 117:619-628.
3. Linster M, Do LAH, Minh NNQ, Chen Y, Zhe Z, Tuan TA, Tuan HM, Su YCF, van Doorn HR, Moorthy M, Smith GJD. 2018. Clinical and Molecular Epidemiology of Human Parainfluenza Viruses 1-4 in Children from Viet Nam. Sci Rep 8:6833.
4. Moorthy M, Samuel P, Peter JV, Vijayakumar S, Sekhar D, Verghese VP, Agarwal I, Moses PD, Ebenezer K, Abraham OC, Thomas K, Mathews P, Mishra AC, Lal R, Muliyil J, Abraham AM. 2012. Estimation of the burden of pandemic(H1N1)2009 in developing countries: experience from a tertiary care center in South India. PLoS One 7:e41507.
5. Moorthy M, Chacko B, Ramakrishna K, Samuel P, Karthik G, Kalki RC, Abraham AM, Akhuj A, Valsan A, Abraham OC, Peter JV. 2011. Risk of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus infection among healthcare workers caring for critically ill patients with pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus infection. J Hosp Infect 77:365—366.
