When Sergejs Berdnikovs, PhD, was going on archeological digs in Europe to study animal remains as an undergraduate student, he didn’t imagine that one day he would become an internationally acclaimed systems biologist. Yet, an unexpected career path led to him conducting research that has changed scientists’ understanding of the human immune system and how it interacts with other biological processes of the body.
From helping scientists prepare for future potential pandemics to uncovering metabolism and immune system connections, Berdnikovs continues to make his mark on the field. Now, he is bringing his unique expertise to the University of Colorado Anschutz Department of Medicine by becoming the first director of asthma allergy research in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine.
“I’ve collaborated with investigators at CU Anschutz for years, and I knew I liked the people and would have great resources here. I think the future of biomedical science is integration, where scientists from completely different disciplines come together to reach new levels of understanding,” says Berdnikovs, now a professor in the division. “My vision is to bring components of immunology, metabolism, endocrine, and developmental biology together to investigate new questions, because such integration has potential to enrich our knowledge of allergy and pulmonary disease tremendously.”
The division is eager to welcome Berdnikovs, says division head Fernando Holguin, MD, who has collaborated with Berdnikovs on research throughout the years.
“Dr. Berdnikovs is an internationally recognized translational researcher in airway biology. His research is highly innovative and is breaking new grounds on our understanding of how metabolism influences airway epithelial cell biology,” Holguin says. “He was selected in this role for his translational and immunology background, and also for being someone who is highly collaborative and committed to team science and mentorship.”
Berdnikovs was born and raised in Latvia, a small country in Europe, where he discovered an interest in biology and evolution.
“My first research was in archaeology, and I used to go on archeological digs, almost like Indiana Jones,” he says. “Essentially, as a biology student, I was partnering with archaeologists to study animal remains at various archaeological sites and learning about microevolution — how animals change through time. That’s part of what sparked my interest in evolutionary processes.”
With a passion to learn more after earning his undergraduate degree in biological sciences, and due to limited educational opportunities in his country at that time, Berdnikovs moved to the United States in 1999 to complete a PhD in evolutionary and developmental biology at the University of Cincinnati. The field required a level of experience in genetics and molecular biology, he explains.
“I decided to learn some molecular biology to acquire a new set of skills, and I liked it too much,” he says with a laugh. “I enjoyed bench research, and it eventually led me to allergy and immunology research. Since I had a theoretical framework perspective from my PhD and the ability to do computational biology, I developed a unique niche.”
In 2005, Berdnikovs began working at Northwestern University, where he spent the next two decades as a researcher and later became a faculty member before joining the CU Anschutz School of Medicine in 2025. Over the years, he built a reputation as an influential researcher in a developing field — systems biology, a type of biomedical research that focuses on looking at the interactions between biological systems.
“As a systems biologist, I do cross-disciplinary research aimed at understanding organisms as a whole and the organism-level processes that may be driving a disease,” he says. “It allows you to look deep into a disease and understand its origins, its mechanisms, and its different types so you have a more holistic picture of it.”
“Many people think of systems biology as dealing with big data and conducting computational analyses, but it actually is the ability to piece together different levels of evidence to develop a new understanding, and that’s what I strive for,” he adds. “That will allow us to refine our therapeutic strategies down the road for patients.”
As a systems biologist, one of Berdnikovs’ goals is to learn how the body’s immune and metabolic pathways interact so scientists can better understand — and better treat — conditions like asthma.
“Allergies and asthma are essentially chronic inflammatory diseases, but surprisingly, there is a strong link to metabolic diseases. A lot of severe asthma cases are actually obesity-related asthma cases,” he says. “There is a poorly understood connection between having insulin resistance, obesity, a metabolic disorder, and developing an immune disorder at the same time. Part of my research portfolio is to understand mechanistically what that connection is.”
Additionally, Berdnikovs is interested in learning more about the early life origins of allergic diseases and asthma to hopefully find new preventive measures that doctors can use early on to change the trajectory of the disease.
A major discovery, and one of his proudest accomplishments, was finding that when an infant gets an infection called respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), it can lead to the metabolic reprogramming of the infant’s nasal airway epithelial cells — a potential explanation for why so many people who had RSV as a child will later develop asthma and other pulmonary diseases.
“This metabolic reprogramming can cause an abnormal development of airways, and that makes the body very susceptible to environmental insults and abnormal immune responses,” Berdnikovs says. “That’s why looking at the reprogramming of airways and the remodeling processes by metabolic systems is important.”
In a more recent study published in the Science Advances journal, he further explored this issue in children between the ages of 2 and 3, finding that children with wheeze (a condition that typically precedes asthma) appear to have reprogrammed airway epithelium and decreased antiviral response (less defense against viral infections).
“We’re trying to understand what leads to asthma in the first place and how it creates a continuum — how what happens in childhood can set a person up for abnormal programming in adulthood,” he says.
Building off these findings, Berdnikovs received funding from the American Lung Association to conduct research focused on exploring the connections between metabolic diseases (like obesity and diabetes) and viral infections (such as RSV, COVID-19, and long COVID). This research aims to further uncover how metabolic dysregulation in the airway epithelial cells affects how the body responds to viral infections.
“When COVID hit, I began investigating what makes people susceptible to severe COVID. Mechanistically, we discovered that it is the same paradigm — insulin resistance is skewing responses to the virus,” he says. “We found that the physiological pathways that are necessary to keep the virus at bay and let the airway resolve the viral infection are communicating with insulin. Essentially, we realized that the high-risk virus evolved to hijack the metabolic system, specifically in the airway cells.
“I want to better understand the connection between the metabolic and virus-responsive pathways,” he adds. “We want to evolve our understanding so we’re more prepared for future pandemics and know which pathways we need to pay attention to and what therapies may help different patients.”
On an international scale, Berdnikovs is also known for his investigations related to eosinophil, a type of white blood cell.
“It’s one of the key cells that you measure in allergic responses, because you always see their presence in tissues during inflammation,” he says. “When I first started researching it during my postdoc, the dogma was that eosinophil was a detrimental, pathogenic cell in allergy and we needed to get rid of it. But now, that view is completely changing — and I’m a big part of that.”
Over the years, investigators realized the therapies that directly targeted eosinophil did not change the outcome of the disease that much, indicating “there was more to the story,” he explains.
“My research looked at why eosinophil cells are there in the first place and what their physiological roles are,” he says. “I realized they do a lot of homeostatic maintenance things like repairing injuries and remodeling tissues. They show up in a disease to try to help the body.”
Through further research, Berdnikovs, who is part of the International Eosinophil Society, aims to pinpoint the role of the eosinophil cells in allergic responses. He hopes to find ways to refine strategies to target what is causing the allergy and spare the cells that benefit the body.
“It’s stimulating for me to go against the dogma, because I’m not afraid to be curious and ask questions that may challenge existing paradigms,” he says. “My research is evolving, and I think I’ve helped influence other researchers to break dogmas that were influencing them and try new experiments.”
Curiosity and innovation are main drivers for Berdnikovs in his new role at CU Anschutz, where he strives to foster more collaborations and research projects between immunologists, allergists, and pulmonologists.
“My mission is to establish more connections across these fields, both clinically and in research, so we can apply for larger grants and ask new interesting questions,” he says. “This is not a one-person type of field. It takes an army of people to make an advancement, and I’m looking forward to making new great discoveries at CU Anschutz.”