Therefore, our laboratory is focused on characterizing cellular and anatomical niches of viral persistence, which we use to inform immunotherapy-based strategies to facilitate HIV control following ART cessation.
Based at the Emory National Primate Research Center at Emory University, our laboratory utilizes Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) infected non-human primates (NHPs) as a comparative model of HIV pathogenesis with native host immune responses while exhibiting similar viral kinetics and immunopathology as observed in PLWH.
Using the NHP model in combination with techniques such as high-parameter flow cytometry and ex vivo T cell functional assays, we have investigated and evaluated novel therapeutic interventions to reduce the viral reservoir content, in hope of developing a strategy towards sustained viral remission in the absence of ART.
In partnership with Merck and ImmunityBio, our laboratory is a core component of the Enterprise for Research and Advocacy to Stop and Eradicate (ERASE) HIV Collaboratory, which seeks to evaluate the juxtaposing roles of CD8+ T cells in eliminating productively infected cells and promoting the maintenance of viral latency.
The development of single-pill antiretroviral therapies (ART) with tolerable toxicity profiles have proven highly effective in suppressing HIV viremia to clinically undetectable levels in treatment-adherent people living with HIV (PLWH).
Although sustained aviremia reduces disease progression and limits further transmission, ART alone is incapable of purging the pool of long-lived, tissue-resident, quiescent CD4+ T-cells harboring latent, yet replication competent, HIV genomes (i.e. the viral reservoir).
