Training the new generation of HIV physicians 22-23

Josep M Llibre, MD, PhD, received his MD in the Universitat de Barcelona, and obtained his specialty in Internal Medicine and his PhD in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is a member of the panel of Antiretroviral treatment guidelines at the GeSIDA group (AIDS group of the SEIMC Spanish society), and an expert advisor of the Catalan Health Institute (ICS) on antiretroviral treatment and hepatitis C (PADEICS). He started caring for patients with HIV/AIDS at the beginning of the epidemic in Spain in 1987. His main areas of interest in HIV Medicine include the clinical implications of HIV-1 resistance, the analysis of safety and efficacy in HIV-1 antiretroviral treatment clinical trials (both in naïve and pre-treated patients), with a special interest in drug efficacy and pharmacoeconomics, and hepatitis C co-infection. He has published widely in journals and book chapters, as well as HIV/AIDS medical webs, on clinical aspects of HIV-1 treatment and care, HIV-1 resistance, clinical reviews, positioning papers, treatment intensification and simplification strategies, and participated in many pivotal clinical trials. He has also published in basic science research journals. He collaborates as an editor and/or peer-reviewing with many top international medical journals. He is involved in HIV Medical Educational training in Spain and other European, as well as Asian Countries.

Monica Gandhi MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine and Associate Division Chief (Clinical Operations/ Education) of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/ San Francisco General Hospital. She also serves as the Director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and the Medical director of the HIV Clinic at SFGH (“Ward 86”). Dr. Gandhi completed her M.D. at Harvard Medical School and then came to UCSF in 1996 for residency training in Internal Medicine. After her residency, Dr. Gandhi completed a fellowship in Infectious Diseases and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, both at UCSF. She also obtained a Masters in Public Health from Berkeley in 2001 with a focus on Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr. Gandhi’s current research program is on identifying low-cost solutions to measuring antiretroviral levels in resource-poor settings, such as determining drug levels in hair and urine samples. Dr. Gandhi also works on pre-exposure prophylaxis and treatment strategies for HIV infection in women. . Dr. Gandhi also has an interest at UCSF in HIV education and mentorship. She also served as the principal

Pedro Cahn has been Scientific Director of Fundación Huésped since 1989 and former President of the International AIDS Society (IAS) for the period 2006-2008. Former Head and current Consultant of the Infectology Division of the Juan A. Fernández Hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is also Full Professor of the Department of Medicine, Infectology Orientation, of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires. Dr. Cahn has been involved in international HIV/AIDS conferences and working groups since 1989, including the 1st Conference on Pathogenesis and Treatment of IAS in Argentina and the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico, which he chaired. Likewise, on repeated occasions, he has acted as an advisor to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS. He is an Illustrious Citizen of the City of Buenos Aires and received the honorable mention “Senator Domingo F. Sarmiento” by the Senate of the Nation (2014).

Chloe Orkin is Professor of HIV Medicine at Queen Mary University of London and Consultant Physician at Barts Health NHS Trust. She is the Clinical Lead for COVID-19 studies at Barts Health. Chloe is immediate past Chair of the British HIV Association, President-elect of the Medical Women’s Federation and a member of the governing council for IAS. Her specialist interest is anti-retroviral therapy.

Professor Orkin has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and has co-authored four British HIV Association guidelines on: Antiretroviral therapy, Hepatitis, Malignancy and Routine Monitoring.

Ana Barroso Abecasis was born in Lisbon. She trained as a medical doctor and as a pharmacist. She finished her PhD in Medical Sciences at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in May 2009. She is also a specialist in Bioinformatics.

Ana is an Assistant Professor at Institute for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT), NOVA University of Lisbon since May 2019. She has coordinated several national and international projects and participates or participated in national or international projects. She coordinates the research line of Global Pathogen Dispersion & Mobility of Populations at the Global Health and Tropical Medicine Research Center, where she was also involved in the development of the research strategy and infrastructure of bioinformatics. She is also a member of several European networks of antiviral drug resistance, including EUResist and European Society for Translational Antiviral Research. Her research interests include Virology, Evolution, Microbiology, Antimicrobial and Antiviral Drug Resistance, Bioinformatics, Research Methods in Health, Transmission of Infectious Diseases, Evolution and Global Health.

In 2012, Ana received the L’Oreal Portugal FCT Unesco Medal of Honour for Women in Science and in 2016 and 2017 she received the prize of Gilead Génese programme.
Ana has published around 70 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, including Lancet Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases and AIDS, 3 conference papers and 2 book chapters, with an h-index of 23 (Google Scholar) and 19 (ResearcherID).

Ana coordinates a Public Health Specialization Course for Medical Doctors and teaches Bioinformatics, Research Methods in Health, Health of Vulnerable Populations and Global Health at several Masters and Doctoral Programmes at the Instituto of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and at the NOVA Medical School. Between 2005 and 2017, she lectured at the International Bioinformatics Workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology. In 2011 and in 2017, she organized the first Bioinformatics courses in Belém do Pará (Brasil) and in Praia (Cape Verde).

Julià Blanco (PhD in Biochemistry, University of Barcelona (UB), 1994) leads the Cell Virology and Immunology (VIC) group at IrsiCaixa. He has extensively studied the role of the HIV envelope glycoprotein (Env) in virus-cell or cell-to-cell interactions and HIV cytopathicity in a translational environment. In vivo, he has explored the mechanisms involved in CD4 T-cell depletion, analysing the contribution of virological and immunological factors that modulate CD4 and B-cell survival. In parallel, his team has developed experimental models for the analysis of cell-to-cell HIV transmission and Env-induced cell death. Knowledge generated regarding the Env function has also proved useful in analysing anti-Env drug and anti-Env antibody mechanisms of action and in contributing to a better understanding of antibody protection from HIV acquisition and spread. Dr. Blanco recently co-founded AlbaJuna Therapeutics SL as an IrsiCaixa spin-off whose main activity is the development of synthetic antibodies against HIV.

Sharon Lewin is the inaugural director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital; Melbourne Laureate Professor, The University of Melbourne; consultant infectious diseases physician, Alfred Hospital and Royal Melbourne Hospital and is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Practitioner Fellow, Melbourne, Australia.  She is an infectious diseases physician and basic scientist. Her research focuses on understanding why HIV persists on treatment and developing clinical trials aimed at ultimately finding a cure for HIV infection.

She is an elected member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society (IAS) representing the Asia Pacific region and co-chairs the IAS Global Advisory board for the Towards an HIV Cure initiative. In 2014, she was named Melburnian of the Year for being an inspirational role model to others in her field and in 2019, was made an Officer of the Order of Australia

José Alcamí (MD,PhD) is specialist in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Immunology. Currently, as Research Professor, leads the AIDS Immunopathogenesis Unit at Instituto de Salud Carlos III and coordinates the Spanish AIDS Research Network. In 2019 was appointed as Scientific Director of the HIV Unit at Hospital Clinic, he is an expert in HIV pathogenesis and author of more than 190 publications in high rank journals.

Sarah Fidler is working as a clinical academic at Imperial College London as a Professor of HIV and infectious disease and at Imperial College NHS Trust as a consultant physician providing clinical care for people living with HIV and adolescents and young adults who have grown up with perinatally acquired HIV infection. Her academic career has spanned three decades and has focused on diagnosis and management of acute HIV infection, early antiretroviral therapy in international trials (SPARTAC) and more recently research studies towards a cure for HIV infection (RIVER, HEATHER, RIO). I have been involved in global health studies exploring how to implement a universal HIV test and treat trial by leading the HPTN071 (PopART) trial in Zambia and South Africa.

Born in Lleida in 1977, Beatriz Mothe, MD, PhD, completed under a national competitive post-specialization programme for physicians (ISCIII Rio Hortega CM08/00020 2009-2011) was on the subject of immunological, virological and genetic HIV-control mechanisms that could be incorporated into the rational design of novel therapeutic vaccine candidates (Catalan Award for Best Thesis on Infectious Diseases in 2012). She has actively participated in pre-clinical testing of a novel HIV T-cell immunogen called HTI, designed to redirect cytotoxic T-cell responses to protective and conserved HIV targets capable of controlling viral replication. Following US research stays at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard (formerly Partners AIDS Research Center) and the National Cancer Institute at Frederick, after taking up a research fellowship position (ISCIII Joan Rodés JR13/00024 2014-2016), she is currently an associated researcher at the Host Genetics and Cellular Immunology group led by Dr. Brander in IrsiCaixa. She also works in the HIV unit of the Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital, where she co-directs with Dr José Moltó the research line of Vaccines, Immunotherapies and Pharmacology. As a clinical researcher, she focuses on identifying and monitoring acute/recent HIV infection and HIV controllers as models for a functional cure (principal investigator for the early-cART and controller cohorts). She also coordinates clinical trials and immune monitoring in aspects related to therapeutic vaccines and eradication strategies. Mothe has been a teacher of the MSc in Zoonoses and One Health (UAB) since 2016 and is currently co-directing with Dr Brander a doctoral thesis on the subject of advanced immunology for the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She has been an associate professor in the Faculty of AIDS and Related Diseases at the University of Vic-University of Central Catalonia (UVic-UCC) since 2014.

Teymur Noori is a psychologist and works at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) as an expert on monitoring and evaluation. He is primarily responsible for monitoring the HIV response in Europe and Central Asia, including monitoring the continuum of HIV care and supporting efforts to monitor the response to viral hepatitis in the EU/EEA. He has recently led efforts to develop a monitoring and evaluation framework for COVID-19 surveillance, preparedness and response indicators in the EU/EEA. Teymur is also leading ECDC work on migrant health and infectious diseases. He recently led ECDC work to develop guidance on screening and vaccination of infectious diseases among newly arrived migrants in the EU/EEA as well as guidance on infection prevention and control of COVID-19 in migrant and refugee reception centres in the EU/EEA.

Juliana Reyes–Urueña, M.D, MPH, MSc and PhD, is a Scientific Officer of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is an agency of the European (ECDC). She possesses a Bachelor of Science in Medicine, a master’s degree in Tropical Medicine and International Health, a master’s degree in public health, and is a specialist of Preventive Medicine and Public Health. She holds a Ph.D. in Methodology of Biomedical Research and Public Health, with postdoctoral training in large studies of epidemiology, health behaviour, health information technology, data management, and program evaluation related to HIV and STIs. She has published widely in professional journals. Her research career began with investigations of HIV risk behaviours of key populations. Currently she is part of the epidemiology intelligence unit in the ECDC and associate professor of the UOC university.

Dr. Marrazzo is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is internationally recognized for her research and education efforts in the field of sexually transmitted infections, especially as they affect women’s health and in the setting of HIV. She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), and was elected to the IDSA Board of Directors in 2018. She was Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine Council from 2015-2018.

Dr. Marrazzo conducts research on the human microbiome, specifically as it relates to female reproductive tract infections and hormonal contraception, and its relationship to women’s risk of STI/HIV acquisition. She was the Protocol Co-Chair for the VOICE Study (MTN-003), a placebo-controlled trial that randomized over 5,000 women in South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe to oral or vaginal tenofovir-based HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis. She chairs the Biomedical Science Committee of the HIV Prevention Trial Network, the group tasked with integrating the biomedical science agenda across numerous clinical trials of antiretroviral prevention agents. She is also the Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded STI Clinical Trials Group and Co-PI of the Leadership Group of the Vaccine Treatment and Evaluation Unit.

Martí Vall-Mayans is Faculty Specialist and Senior Researcher at the STI and Neglected Tropical Skin Diseases Unit from the Department of Infectious Diseases and Fight Infections Foundation of Hospital Germans Trias Pujol in Badalona, Catalonia (Spain). Former WHO Consultant, he is member of the editorial board of the IUSTI-*Europe guidelines and Scientific Chair of the 2020 European IUSTI congress. His research interests include the implementation of alternative treatments and strategies for treponemal diseases (Trep-*AB ERC Project) and the study of emerging infectious diseases.

He earned his MD and PhD from Autonomous University of Barcelona (Barcelona, 1982 and 1989), a Diploma of Tropical Medicine (Barcelona, 1983) and a Màster of Public Health (Houston, 1986).

Jean-Michel Molina, MD, PhD, is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Paris, and Head of the Infectious Diseases Department at the Saint-Louis and Lariboisière Hospitals in Paris, France. The Department of Infectious Diseases is mainly involved in the care of immunocompromised patients, patients with HIV infection, bone marrow and renal transplant recipients, and patients with haematological malignancies and cancers.

Professor Molina’s primary clinical research interest focuses on HIV infection, initially the treatment of AIDS-related opportunistic infections, and then the treatment of HIV infection.

He has been involved in a number of studies assessing new drugs or new strategies for the treatment of HIV infection. A cohort of more than 6,000 patients with HIV infection is followed in his department.

He is also a member of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) U944 team at the Saint-Louis Hospital investigating cell biology of viral infections.

He has authored many papers in a wide variety of scientific journals, including Clinical Infectious Diseases, the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet and AIDS.

Professor Molina is also involved in the French National Agency for AIDS Research (ANRS), where he chaired the clinical trial group for the last 12 years before becoming a member of the ANRS strategic committee.

More recently, Professor Molina has broadened his field of interest to the prevention of HIV infection with antiretrovirals and has led the ANRS IPERGAY pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) trial in men who have sex with men. A cohort of more than 3,500 people on PrEP is followed in his unit, and a new ANRS PrEP study (ANRS Prevenir) is implemented in the Paris region to contain the HIV epidemic among gay men.

From 2008 he has been working at IrsiCaixa as a Clinical Cohorts Coordinator of the HIVACAT Programme (Project for the development of an HIV vaccine). He collaborate on the recruitment and follow-up of several cohorts (HIV acute infections, controllers, rapid progressors, HESN), and other studies (microbiota, pre-exposure prophylaxis). Another of his fields is Human Papillomavirus in HIV-infected. They have set up a program for the prevention of anal cancer in our Clinical Unit. He conducts a cohort study of HIV-uninfected men who have sex with men (MSM), in collaboration with a community-based organization (BCN Checkpoint). The objectives are to detect early infections and other STI among MSM, and to ensure a linkage to care. He collaborates with the therapeutic HIV vaccine study “Safety and Immunogenicity of ChAdV63.HIVconsv and MVA.HIVconsv Candidate HIV-1 Vaccines in Recently HIV-1 Infected Individuals With Early Viral Suppression After Initiation of Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART)”.

He also collaborates with the Microbial Genomics Group at the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute. This group has been the first one worldwide to demonstrate in two independent cohorts of HIV-1-infected subjects and HIV-1-negative controls in Europe that MSM often has a distinct composition of the human fecal microbiota, with increased microbial richness and diversity and enrichment in the Prevotella enterotype. Another field in which he is currently working is the Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). Regarding this, he participates in a working group set up by the Health Department of Catalonia for the implementation of PrEP in our setting. Their group has developed an explant model which has been used to assess the potential of Maraviroc as a drug for PrEP using a single oral dose. Their results showed no ex-vivo protection, suggesting that ‘on demand’ preexposure prophylaxis with Maraviroc would not prevent rectal HIV-1 transmission. Apart from his research agenda, he works as an attending medical doctor at the HIV Unit of the Hospital, where he takes care of 3000 patients.

Dr Carmelina Cappello is a general surgeon, currently holding a position as colorectal surgical specialty Doctor at Homerton University Hospital, in London. She is a specialist in benign and malignant conditions of the anorectum. She is a senior clinicians at  HANS – Homerton Anal Neoplasia Service- the national referral centre in London  for the management and prevention of anal cancer and  anogenital HPV pre-cancerous lesions. She is also part of the Homerton Hospital pelvic floor service.  She has been an invited speaker at international conferences and published relevant researches on the topic in high impact factors journals.

1. CURRENT POSITIONS
1. Senior Researcher at CONICET.
2. Professor of Immunology. School of Medicine. UBA.
3. Vice-Director of INBIRS (Institute for Biomedical Research on Retroviruses and AIDS, School of Medicine, UBA).
4. Director of the Department of Microbiology, Parasitology and Immunology. School of Medicine. SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, UBA.

2. DOCTORAL THESES SUPERVISED
Total number of Doctoral Theses supervised, already defended: 12.

3. POSITIONS HELD IN SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES
Vice-president of the Argentine Society of Immunology, for the period 2003-2004.
2. President of the Argentine Society of Immunology. Period 2005-2006.
Member of the National Academy of Pharmacy and Biochemistry. Since 2022.
4. Member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences. Since 2022.

4. AD-HOC REVIEWER OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS IN INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS.
1. FASEB Journal (USA).
2. Journal of Immunology (USA).
3. Journal of Leukocyte Biology (USA).
4. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (USA).
5. Pediatric Research (USA).
6. Plos One (USA).
7. Cell Death and Differentiation (USA).
8. Frontiers in Immunology (USA).
9. PNAS (USA).

Peter Hunt is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Experimental Medicine at UCSF and Co-Director of the UCSF-GIVI Center for AIDS Research for Basic and Translational Science.  His primary research focus is on the inflammatory consequences of HIV infection.  His translational research program seeks to understand both the causes and consequences of persistent immune activation both in the presence and the absence of antiretroviral therapy.  He collaborates extensively with a multidisciplinary team of investigators to assess the impact of persistent immune activation on mortality and chronic diseases associated with aging as well as on the persistence of HIV in cellular reservoirs.  He also conducts pilot clinical trials of novel immune-based interventions designed to decrease immune activation and recently completed a term as Chair of the Inflammation Committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group.  Dr. Hunt has also led a translational research program in Mbarara, Uganda, focused on the determinants of immune recovery during suppressive antiretroviral therapy in that setting and has helped develop a large mucosal immunology program at San Francisco General Hospital focused on the impact of HIV on gut-associated lymphoid tissue and the determinants of microbial translocation in HIV infection.  In July, 2016, he also started a laboratory to identify the determinants of persistent immune defects in treated HIV infection, which likely contribute to infectious, neoplastic, vascular, and metabolic morbidity and mortality and may also serve as barriers to HIV cure.

Senior Researcher at the HIV Clinic of the Infectious Diseases Department at the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición, Salvador Zubirán  (INCMNSZ) since 2008. She is member of the Mexican National System of Researchers since 2010, currently level II. Assistant Professor of the HIV/AIDS Program at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). CRS Coordinator of the Mexican site from the AIDS Clinical Trial Groups (ACTG) Network since December 2020. Sub-investigator of the MOSAICO study at the Mexico City site.

Member of the Mexican Association of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (AMIMC) since 2007. Chair of the AMIMC HIV Committee from 2015-2017. Member of the International AIDS Society since 2007. Local Chair of the International AIDS Society (IAS) Scientific Conference held in Mexico City in 2019. Appointed as part of the scientific committee to be leader of the “clinical track” of the World AIDS Conference of the IAS in Montreal in 2022.

Ole Kirk has been an ID consultant since 2011 and works at Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark, sharing his time between an ID in-patient ward and a HIV out-patient ward. He is also an adjunct professor in infectious diseases at University of Southern Denmark.

Since 1997, Ole has been engaged in HIV medicine and European research activities, in particular in management of the EuroSIDA Study, but also in other large cohort collaborations such as the DAD Study and COHERE. Since 2006, he has coordinated the TB-HIV Studies including 62 sites in Latin America, Western Europe and Eastern Europe.

Ole has published approximately 200 articles, mainly within research areas such HIV epidemiology, uptake of and response to ART across Europe as well as toxicity to ART, often with a perspective of regional differences across Europe. Another research priority has been HIV and opportunistic infections. In recent years he has been focusing on special clinical issues for PLWH in Eastern Europe, and in particular tuberculosis.

Ole is present chair of the OI panel of EACS Guidelines Committee and has over the last 15 years been actively involved in teaching activities for HIV clinicians, with special focus on colleagues in Eastern Europe. This includes organizing local HIV seminars, participating in WHO mentoring programmes for Ukrainian clinicians and running monthly videoconferences for HIV clinicians in Georgia and Ukraine.

In Denmark, Ole has been organizing and leading post-graduate courses of HIV infection and HIV care for Danish ID clinicians since 2013, and he is present chair of the Danish Society of Infectious Diseases.

Valeria Fink obtained her medical degree at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and was trained as an Infectious Diseases specialist at Hospital Fernández (Buenos Aires). Since 2007, she has worked in the Clinical Research area at Fundación Huésped (Buenos Aires), the largest NGO in Argentina serving people with and at risk of HIV/AIDS in Argentina, initially as investigator, then coordinating the clinical research site and, since 2022, as director of the Division of Innovation and Translational Research. She has participated in several projects, international cohorts, translational and epidemiological studies, with a special focus in cancer, oncogenic viruses and HIV. She has been part of the Caribbean, Central and South America network for HIV epidemiology (CCASAnet) (IeDEA Region 2), where she has participated in cancer related projects, that allowed the characterization of the cancer situation in the HIV population in this region.

She has developed HPV-related projects in different HIV+ populations (HIV+ women, HIV+ men who have sex with men and transgender women) with grant supports of the National Cancer Institute (Argentina).

She is a member of the UM CFAR/ Sylvester CCC– Argentina Collaborative Consortium for Research and Training in Virally Induced Cancers disproportionally affecting the Argentinian population at highest risk for HIV infection and AIDS, a NIH supported translational network for research in cancer and HIV, involving the University of Miami and reference basic science research centers in Argentina, where research and training in AIDS related malignancies are core issues.

Fundación Huésped became one of the four Latin American sites for the AIDS Malignancy Consortium (AMC) in 2018. Dr Fink has served as the Associate Chair for Latin America International Sites of the AMC since 2019.

Arkaitz Imaz received his MD from University of Navarra in 2002 and completed his Internal Medicine training at Vall d’Hebron Hospital (Barcelona). He obtained his PhD from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2012.

In 2010 he joined the Department of Infectious Diseases of the Bellvitge University Hospital where he works as a physician in the HIV and STI Unit.

He is involved in clinical research in the field of HIV and antiretroviral therapy, participating in multiple research projects and clinical trials. He also acts as reviewer in several scientific journals and has participated in clinical guidelines on antiretroviral therapy, drug resistance and HIV-associated diseases.