Viral Immunology

Transfusion medicine is linked to multiple viral infections, including persistent viruses like HIV and hepatitis B and C, as well as emerging arboviral infections like West Nile virus, Zika virus, and others.  Our goal is to understand the acute immune response associated with viral infections to better identify and interdict these pathogens to increase blood safety, as well as to capitalize to access to subjects identified at the earliest point of infection to better understand the generation of effective immune responses against acute and chronic viral infections.

The lab has a long-standing interest in determining the immune factors that determine clinical outcome after viral infection, beginning with the identification of cytolytic CD4+ T cell activity in HIV infected subjects who control the infection via robust immune responses (elite controllers). Our group helped define the ontogeny of cytokine induction in acute HIV infection through examination of serum from infected plasma donors.

For acute viral infections, we were the first to show in humans that levels of regulatory T cells (Tregs) determine disease outcome in West Nile virus infection, with higher levels of Tregs predicting asymptomatic infection in humans and mice. Access to blood donors allows us to identify subjects at the earliest point of infection, prior to symptom onset, through routine blood donor screening for viral RNA or DNA. Current efforts focus on study of HIV elite controllers as well as determining the immune correlates of pathogenic outcome in acute arbovirus infections and SARS-CoV-2.