Current HIV Research

Shiu-Lok Hu, Ph.D., is currently the Milo Gibaldi Endowed Professor of Pharmaceutics and Head of the AIDS-Related Research Division at the Washington National Primate Research Center. His current research focuses on the design of immunogens and vaccine approaches to broadly stimulate neutralizing antibodies against HIV-1, the use of non-human primate models to evaluate prevention and treatment strategies against primate lentivirus infection and disease, and factors that contribute to the resistance or adaptation of lentiviruses in primate species.

Dr. Lusso received his M.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Turin and his Ph.D. from the Ministry of Scientific and Technologic Research, Rome, Italy. He is a board-certified specialist in internal medicine and in infectious diseases. At NIH he worked in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell at the National Cancer Institute. He also created the Laboratory of Human Virology at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan and became associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Cagliari. Then he again joined NIH, where he became chief of the Viral Pathogenesis Section in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

Dr. Mitchell completed his M.D. from the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, and his Residency and Fellowship in Pediatrics and Pediatric Infectious Diseases from the University of Minnesota Minneapolis. He then completed a Research Fellowship in Virology from the National Institutes of Health. He is a tenured Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology at the University of Miami Miller School Of Medicine. He has been engaged in research on Pediatric HIV/AIDS and Childhood Tuberculosis for more than 20 years.

Dr. Nafees Ahmad is a Professor of Immunobiology and Director of Immunity and Infection at the College of Medicine, University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. He obtained his undergraduate and postgraduate education from the Aligarh Muslim University, India and doctorate from the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, India. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in HIV/AIDS from the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. His research has been focused on mechanisms of HIV immunopathogenesis in younger and older HIV-infected patients, including the HIV-mediated aging of the immune system. He is investigating the mechanisms of differential HIV-1 infection in younger and older populations, including the role of viral and host factors and dysregulation of T cell functions. He has authored more than 100 publications and prestigious medical school text book “Sherris Medical Microbiology”.

Dr. Roberto Di Santo is a Full Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, “Sapienza” University of Rome Italy. He holds a Master’s degree in Chemistry and in Pharmacy from “Sapienza” University of Rome. Prof. Di Santo research is focused primarily on drug design and synthesis of new molecular entities related with biological activities. He devoted particular efforts in the discovery of antimicrobial and antitumor agents. Most part of his scientific activity is focused on compounds active against HIV targets like integrase, ribonuclease H and polymerase functions of the reverse transcriptase, and protease. Dr. Di Santo is author and co-author of books and over 130 publications and patents.

Peng Zhan obtained B.S. and M.Sc. degrees and a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from Shandong University, China. Then, he joined the research group of Professor Xinyong Liu as a Lecturer. Then, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow funded by JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science), Japan. Currently, he is a full professor at the Institute of Medicinal Chemistry, Shandong University. His research interests involve the discovery of novel antiviral, antigout agents based on rational drug design and combinatorial chemistry approaches as well as innovative exploitation of medicinal chemistry methodologies.

Muktar Aliyu, MBBS, DrPH, MPH is a Professor of Health Policy and Medicine with the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. His research interests are in the implementation of scientific approaches to deliver high quality and culturally appropriate HIV care, in order to improvethe outcomes of HIV programs in low and middle-income countries.

Dr. Arora received his PhD in Immunopathology from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India in 1987 and post-doctoral training from the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas USA. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medical Sciences (India) since 2004. He is Professor-in-charge of the HIV Diagnosis and Disease Monitoring Center at PGI and his research work focuses on the Immunological aspects of Infectious Diseases mainly HIV, HIV-TB co-infection, HCV and Experimental Leishmaniasis. More recently, his lab started working on the role of cancer stem cells in breast carcinoma and regenerative properties of mesenchymal stem cells in chronic autoimmune inflammatory disorders. He has 157 scientific publications in the peer-reviewed journals of repute. He is the recipient of Indo-US Young Investigator’s award in 1991 and Senior Scientist Oration award in Immunology in 2018.

Shilpa Buch is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience, University of Nebraska Medical Center. Her research focuses on understanding the neuropathogenesis of HIV/SIV infection using cell culture, rodents and macaques as model systems. She is the director of the Nebraska Center for Substance Abuse Research, the mission of which is to promote and enhance drug abuse research and mentor trainees in this area.

Dr. Siddappa Byrareddy is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neurosciences, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha with more than 14 years of experience in the field of HIV pathogenesis, cure, infectious diseases in general and has published more than 120 peer-reviewed publications. His research focuses on developing an AIDS vaccine using a non-human primate model of human HIV infection to understand host-virus dynamics. He completed his postdoctoral training for primate biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Byrareddy's recent research focuses on HIV neuroimmunology, CNS reservoirs and substance abuse.

Gabriella d’Ettorre is Associated Professor in Infectious Diseases at the University Sapienza Rome, Italy. She is the supervisor for the management of about 1000 HIV positive outpatient. Professor d’Ettorre has carried out several original investigations in the field of pathogenesis, innovative treatment and comorbidities of HIV infection. She is the author of over 150 publications in peer- reviewed journals and her major research interest is focused on the study of microbiome in HIV.

Rita B. Effros earned her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Pennsylvania, under the mentorship of Peter Doherty, 1996 Nobel Laureate. Her thesis work on immunity to viruses continues to be her research focus, with special emphasis on telomeres, the regions at the end of chromosomes, which are shortened during cell division. Based on the studies of telomere/telomerase dynamics in human T cells, her laboratory was one of the first to propose that HIV disease may involve accelerated aging of the immune system. She was the 2007 winner of the prestigious Kleemeier Award by the Gerontological Society of America, and she since 2015, she is serving as the President of that organization.

Guido Ferrari, M.D., is Associate Professor of Surgery and Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Ferrari received his M.D. degree from the University of Genoa (Italy) where he also completed his residency in Medical Microbiology. Dr. Ferrari has been working in the field of HIV-1 clinical and basic research since 1985 to characterize the ontogeny and breadth of the immune responses. He has published over 125 scientific manuscripts. His interest focuses on identifying protective epitopes that can be recognized by CD8 T cell and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxic responses and to leverage this knowledge to develop new vaccine and immune therapeutic strategies.

Dr. Tracy Fischer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. Her research focuses on the role of inflammatory changes and immune dysregulation in HIV neuropathogenesis in the cART era and how altered immune function influences the development and maintenance of viral persistence in tissue macrophages, including microglia in brain. To advance our current understanding of HIV-associated neurocognitive impairment persistence among infected persons with virus suppression, Dr. Fischer is also exploring how inflammation is sustained in the brain of HIV infected patients under successful pharmacological intervention or without detectable virus production in brain.

Dr. Frey is currently an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Fairleigh Dickinson University School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in NJ. During her postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University, Dr. Frey designed non-nucleoside compounds targeting HIV reverse transcriptase using a structure-based approach. Currently, Dr. Frey is developing new computational approaches to model and predict resistance mutations in HIV RT. The development of new computational approaches predicting resistance-associated mutations will facilitate the design of new resilient compounds.

Dr. Feng Gao is a professor of Medicine at Duke University and the director of the National Engineering Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine at Jilin University in China. He has a long-standing interest in elucidating the origin, evolution and genetic variation of human and simian immunodeficiency viruses, as well as in studying gene function, pathogenesis and vaccines of HIV/SIV from the evolutionary perspective. He currently studies maturation mechanisms of broadly neutralizing antibodies in humans and non-human primates, impacts of immune escape mutations on viral fitness, development of autoreactivity during neutralizing antibody maturation, and roles of maternal neutralizing antibodies in mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1.

Dr. Garcia is currently a Professor of Medicine in the Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases (IGHID), and the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also an Oliver Smithies Investigator. Throughout his career, Dr. Garcia has made seminal contributions to the understanding of HIV pathogenesis, specifically the function of Nef, which is an important determinant of HIV pathogenesis and disease progression. More recently, Dr. Garcia’s group has established an outstanding track record in the development, implementation and use of humanized mice. Since their landmark publications describing the humanized BLT TOM and more recent MOM mouse models have been widely used to address key questions of HIV infection, transmission, prevention, and more recently, persistence and cure.

Dr. Gendelman obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences and Russian Studies with honors from Muhlenberg College and his M.D. from the Pennsylvania State University-Hershey Medical Center where he was the 1999 Distinguished Alumnus. He is a physician-scientist with more than 34 years of research experience and occupying senior leadership positions. Currently Dr. Gendelman is the Chairman of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska USA. Dr. Gendelman has published greater than 400 peer-reviewed scientific publications, edited nine books and monographs, and is named inventor of eight issued U.S. patents. Dr. Gendelman was the founding Editor (1993) and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology, published by Springer.

Associate Professor David Harrich is Group Leader of HIV and Molecular Virology at QIMR Berghofer MRI, where he is a Senior Research Fellow. He earned a PhD at UCLA in experimental Pathology and undertook postdoctoral training from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre. He has published more than 70 papers and most of them are on HIV-1 molecular biology and virus replication.

Dr. Dushyantha Jayaweera received his M.D. degree in Sri Lanka, and trained in medicine in Sri Lanka and Great Britain, and at Loyola University of Chicago, joining the Miller School faculty in 1992. He has been the Executive Dean for Research and Research Education at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine where he had been serving as interim Executive Dean since September 2015. Jayaweera is also a professor of medicine and has more than 20 years of clinical and research experience with HIV. He maintains an active clinical practice, serving as Director of the HIV/HCV co-infection clinic and leading numerous industry-funded trials of medications for patients with viral diseases.

Dr. Tal Kafri, PhD is a professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Gene Therapy Center. Currently, he is the Director at Lenti Viral Vector Core, Lenti-shRNA Core Facility. His filed of interest include the need to efficiently deliver genetic cargo and to maintain long-term transgene expression in vivo which prompted the development of the HIV-1 based vector system.

Dr. Kashanchi is the Director of Research at the George Mason University Biodefense Program in the Washington D.C proper. He obtained more than $13.2 M in funding (NIH, DOD, DOE, and Keck) since his departure from NIH in 2000. He has published 198 peer-reviewed manuscripts with an h index of 53 and served as an editorial board member and reviewer for Retrovirology, JBC, J. Virol, Virology, NAR, 4 PLoS Journals, Cell, Molecular Cell, Nature, Medicine, and Science Translational Medicine. He is also a regular NIH study section member and has served 141 panels since 2000.

Dr. Kamel Khalili is the Laura H. Carnell Professor and Chair in the Department of Neuroscience at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. He has actively studied the neuropathogenesis of human viruses, particularly HIV-1, for more than 30 years. He has authored more than 427 manuscripts and has been the recipient of more than $80 million in grant funds from federal and non-federal sources. He has made numerous contributions to the field of neurovirology and most recently, Dr. Khalili and his colleagues have pioneered gene editing technology to eradicate HIV-1 from host cell DNA.

Dr. Leondios Kostrikis is a tenured Professor of Biotechnology and Virology at University of Cyprus, Head of Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology and Vice-Chairperson of the Department of Biological Sciences. He received his B.Sc. (1987), M.Sc. (1989), M.Ph. (1990) and Ph.D. (1993) degrees from New York University (NYU), United States. This was followed by post-doctoral research at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center of Rockefeller University (New York) on the molecular virology of human immunodeficiency virus. He joined the faculty of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center as a staff investigator in 1998 and the Rockefeller University as an Assistant Professor in 1999. He received a number of awards. He is an editorial board member for seven international journals, and has served on study sections and committees for European and international grant agencies, charities, and scientific conferences in HIV/AIDS. Dr. Kostrikis has now turned his attention to novel concepts in HIV vaccine development and prevention of HIV-1 transmission.

Dr. Li is a tenured Professor in the School of Biological Sciences and Nebraska Center for Virology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Li obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Virology from the Beijing University, China. Dr. Li has more than 20 years of experience in studying HIV-1 pathogenesis, transmission, microbicide, and vaccine development and his technical expertise includes the use of SIV-rhesus macaque model, human specimens, humanized-BLT (bone marrow liver and thymus) mouse model, and single-cell in situ analyses. Dr. Li has published extensively on HIV/SIV transmission, pathogenesis and prevention, including one paper in Science and two papers in Nature as the lead author.

Dr. Binhua Ling is currently a tenured Associate Professor at the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Tulane University School of Medicine, and the Tulane National Primate Center (TNPRC). She obtained her medical degree from Jiangxi Medical College of Nanchang University, and her M. Med. S. and Ph.D. from Peking University Health Science Center in China. She received postdoctoral training at the TNPRC and Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York. Dr. Ling’s research interests are to study HIV tissue reservoirs (i.e. the central nervous system and gut), antiretroviral therapy, HIV/Drug abuse, and HIV/Aging by using the SIV/SHIV-infected nonhuman primate models. Ling’s research is supported by NIH and other sources.

Paolo Maggi. MD is the Director of the Day-Hospital of the Institute of Infectious Disease at the University of Bari – Italy, and a professor of the Specialty School Clinic of Infectious Diseases at the University of Bari. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 scientific papers and of 8 chapters of medicine books in the field of clinical parasitology, tropical medicine, viral hepatitis and HIV. His major current research interest is focused on premature ageing, cardiovascular and renal comorbidities in HIV positive people.

Dr. Qin’s research focuses on defining the role of innate immunity including complement system and monocyte activation in the pathogenesis of human diseases, such as HIV infection, HIV-associated cardiovascular diseases (CVD), and on developing a novel cell ablation research tool for broad scientific applications. He has extensive expertise in immunology, monocyte & macrophage biology, complement, HIV-1 therapy, and HIV-1-associated atherosclerosis. He has demonstrated that inhibition of the activity of human CD59, a complement regulator may be a novel approach for HIV therapy. He demonstrated the atherogenic role of caspase-1 pathway activation and IDO in HIV-associated CVD. Currently, he is involved in testing the novel therapeutics for treatment of HIV-associated CVD.

Shankar, an alumni of University of Madras, YRG CARE, Linkoping University & University of Malaya, is working on certain persistently-infecting pathogens such as HIV, TB, melioidosis etc, and immune evasion mechanisms adopted by these agents in the host. Currently, the he is Head in the Department of Life Sciences, Central University of Tamil Nadu. He is also the Editor of PLoS One, BMC Infectious Diseases, Medicine and BMC Immunology. He has active collaborations with global researchers from leading research institutions.

Hugo Soudeyns obtained training in microbiology and immunology and has been active in the field of HIV/AIDS research. In January 2000, Dr. Soudeyns opened a research unit devoted to the study of viral immunopathology at Centre de recherche du CHU Sainte-Justine. In collaboration with the Centre maternel et infantile sur le sida (CHU Sainte-Justine), his work led to the identification of important differences in cell-mediated immunity between adults and children, and contributed to the understanding of the pathogenesis of pediatric HIV infection. His primary research interests are mainly focused on mother-to-child transmission of viral diseases.

Dr. Kok Keng Tee is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Malaya (UM), Malaysia. He received his PhD in molecular virology and evolutionary biology in UM and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, and postdoctoral fellowship from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA. His research is focused on the genomic epidemiology, evolutionary dynamics and transmission network of rapidly evolving viruses including HIV, hepatitis and respiratory viruses. He has published over 85 research articles and served as Editor for PLoS One, Virology Journal and Frontiers in Microbiology.

Zunyou Wu is the Director of the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, China CDC and an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at UCLA. He is a leader in the field of HIV prevention strategies and oversees overall technical implementation of detection, prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS in China. He has published over 400 academic papers, 201 of which are published in the international journals, including Science, Lancet etc. Dr. Wu has received many honors and awards, including the 2005 International Rolleston Award for implementing harm reduction in China, “Hall of Fame” of 2006 UCLA School of Public Health's Alumni, and the UNAIDS Gold Medal in 2008.

Dr. Richard Y. Zhao is a Professor of Pathology, Microbiology-Immunology, Global Health and Human Virology, and the Division Head of Molecular Pathology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. from Oregon State University, and postdoctoral training at Columbia University. He was on the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine where he received an endowed chair as the Bernard L. Mirkin PhD/MD Research Scholar. Dr. Zhao’s research interest is to study virus-host interactions, viral pathogenicity and drug resistance as well as antiviral drug development.

Dr. Ceccarelli is actively involved in the study and management of persons living with HIV for over 15 years. He is serving in a large Italian University Hospital, Sapienza University of Rome, and in the Italian Red Cross. He is the author of over 100 papers on the topics of HIV, STD and infectious diseases in critically ill patients and in special populations, such as migrants.

Dr. Cory received a Pharm.D. from Drake University, and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Kentucky. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Pharmacy, in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Translational Science. His research is focused on identifying strategies to increase intracellular concentrations of antiretrovirals in myeloid reservoirs of HIV-1.

Dr. Shariq M. Usmani obtained his B.S. in Chemistry and Biology with honors from the Aligarh Muslim University, India and M.S. in Biotechnology from the Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, India. He also received his PhD in Cell Biology with magna cum laude, from Konstanz University, Germany. Presently, he is working as a Postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Dr. Thorsten Mempel Massachusetts General Hospital, Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases (CIID), Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.