Hot topics in HIV – Vaccines, immune recovery and eradication 2022

Dr. Clotet received his MD (1976) and his PhD (1981), with a thesis on autoimmune diseases, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). That same year, his internship as an Internal Medicine specialist at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona coincided with the first AIDS case reported in Spain. This case was the catalyst for a career dedicated to this serious disease, first as head of the HIV Unit of the Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital in Badalona (1987-2015) and then as founder and president of the Fight against AIDS Foundation (1992), which is now named as Fight Infections Foundation.

Dr. Clotet soon saw the need to go a step beyond patient care to conduct research aimed at eradicating AIDS. In 1995, with the support of “la Caixa” and the Department of Health of the Generalitat of Catalonia, he founded the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute, which he still heads.  In addition, Dr. Clotet is also the clinical director of Infectious Diseases at the Metropolitana Nord area of the Catalan Institute of Health, scientific advisor to two IrsiCaixa spin-offs: Aelix Therapeutics SL and AlbaJuna Therapeutics SL and director of the Chair of AIDS and Related Diseases at the Universitat de Vic (UVic).

He has published more than 1000 papers in high impact international journals and his contributions to research have been recognized with the Josep Trueta medal to Sanitary Merit and the ‘Premi Nacional de Recerca’, among other awards.

ICREA Research Professor and Principal Investigator at Retrovirology and Clinical Studies research group, Irsicaixa AIDS Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain.

Specialist physician and researcher at Fight Infections Foundation, Badalona, Spain.

Angela Ciuffi is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Microbiology of the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and the University of Lausanne (UNIL), in Switzerland. She is also the director of the School of Biology of the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at the University of Lausanne.

Angela Ciuffi obtained her PhD at the University of Lausanne and received post-doctoral training in Prof. Frederic Bushman’s laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania and in Prof. Amalio Telenti’s laboratory at the Lausanne University Hospital. Her research focuses on HIV-host interactions in the context of HIV replication, integration, latency, and innate immunity. Her current work uses cutting-edge approaches and technologies, including epitranscriptomic and single-cell analyses, to further characterize the HIV-host cell interplay, capture the cell heterogeneity in response to HIV infection and identify cellular signatures associated with specific HIV-related phenotypes.

Graduated as Physician-biochemist from the Russian State Medical University (Moscow) in 1992 – German MD in theoretical medicine.

PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) at Heinrich-Pette-Institut for Experimental Virology and University of Hamburg in 1996.

Habilitation/Venia legendi in Molecular Medicine in 2002

W2/W3 professor for Experimental Paediatric Oncology and Haematology at Goethe University Frankfurt in 2007.

Since 2009 full (W3) professor for cell and gene therapy and Head of the respective Research Dept. at the Dept. of Stem Cell Transplantation, University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg.

President e.o. (2018-2020) of the German Society of Gene Therapy

Since 2019: Speaker of the Working Group “Gene technology report” of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences / since 2022: Berlin Institute of Health.

The main interest of BF is the permanent genetic modification of target cells for clinical gene therapy (e.g. adoptive immunotherapy, HIV gene therapy), but also basic and clinical research. He has long-standing experience with different types of retroviral vectors; his group has introduced the popular LeGO vector platform and innovative cell marking approaches such as RGB marking and optical barcoding. More recently, they have applied different genome-editing techniques (TALENs, CRISPR/Cas) for cell modification. Another major topic of his work has been the development of novel tools for molecular diagnostics in the context of stem cell transplantation and immunotherapy.

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.

Professor of Immunology at Oxford University, UK

Jay Grobler is Executive Director, Infectious Disease and Vaccines at Merck.  He currently leads early clinical development for infectious disease programs and oversees biology for pipeline and marketed infectious disease products.  Before assuming this role, Dr. Grobler had leadership roles in discovery and early clinical development focused on identifying new agents for HIV, HCV, as well as neuroscience and cardiovascular targets.  He has led identification and lead optimization activities for several small molecule discovery programs, these activities include biochemical, biophysical, and cell-based assay development, compound screening, high throughput screen follow-up and compound mechanism of action determination.

Among his contributions, Dr. Grobler carried out seminal studies on the mechanism of action of integrase inhibitors that contributed to the identification of Isentress.  More recently, he led the preclinical and early clinical development of islatravir, a first-in-class nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase translocation inhibitor (NRTTI; currently in phase 3 clinical development).Dr. Grobler received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Miami in Miami, Florida, and subsequently competed training as an IRTA Fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, before joining Merck in 1997.

University Education – 1987 PhD in Chemistry, University of Hamburg, Germany. – 1982 Diploma in Chemistry, University of Hamburg, Germany.

Professional Positions – Since 2010 ICREA Research Professor at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. – 1998-2009 Full Professor, Saarland University, Germany. – 1990-1998 Assistant Professor, University of Freiburg, Germany. – 1988-1990 Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute Pasteur, Paris, France. – 1987-1988 Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute Biotechnological Research, Braunschweig, Germany

Dr. Petrovas is currently the head of the Laboratory of Tissue Investigation, at the Institute of Pathology, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, CHUV, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His previous work focused on the mechanisms mediating the “exhaustion” of SIV/HIV- specific CD8 T cells and he was the first to describe PD-1 as a mediator of SIV/HIV-specific CD8 T cell survival. More recently, his research has been focused on the dynamics of CD4 and CD8 T cells at tissue level and particularly in the lymph node follicles in HIV and SIV infection. His work was the first to describe the phenotype, localization, molecular profile and dynamics of Tfh CD4 T cells in acute and chronic SIV infection. Currently, he is characterizing the dynamics of tissue immune cells in HIV/SIV and cancer and developing tools to understand the interplay between inflammation, adaptive immunity and tissue antigens.

Dr Maria C. Puertas has 20 years of research experience in immunology and virology, with special focus on the pathogenesis of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV-1), the etiological agent of AIDS.

She graduated in Biology from the University of Barcelona (UB) in 2000 and in 2001 was awarded a fellowship by the Catalan government to pursue PhD studies in the Immunology Laboratory for Research and Diagnostic Applications (LIRAD) at Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital (Badalona). In 2005 she was awarded a Severo Ochoa biomedical research fellowship from the Fundación Ferrer to complete her studies on autoimmune diseases.

After obtaining her PhD in Immunology in 2006 — for which she received an Outstanding Doctorate Award from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) — she joined Dr. Javier Martínez-Picado’s group at IrsiCaixa, where she has participated in research into antiretroviral resistance, mechanisms of viral pathogenesis and new treatment strategies to achieve a potential cure of HIV-1. In recent years, she has focused mainly on measuring viral persistence in antiretroviral-treated individuals and she has been involved in clinical trials aimed at reducing residual replication and viral latency.

She has published 55 papers in high-impact journals, has participated in Spanish- and European-funded collaborative projects and currently also lectures at the University of Barcelona (UB).

Dr. Stevenson is currently Professor in the Department of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Director of the Institute of AIDS and Emerging Infectious Diseases (IAEID), Director of the Global Virus Network, and Co-Director of the Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) at the University of Miami. Prior to 2020, Dr. Stevenson was the David Freelander Chair for AIDS Research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the Director of the Center for AIDS Research at that institution. Dr. Stevenson obtained his BSc. (1980) and Ph.D. (1984) in Glasgow, Scotland.

Dr. Stevenson is a molecular virologist who has been working on the viral etiology of AIDS for over 30 years. He has provided insight into the mechanisms regulating HIV replication, persistence and disease pathogenesis. Dr. Stevenson has served as Chair of the HIV/AIDS Virology Study Section at the National Institutes of Health, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), and has served on the NIH Office of AIDS Research, which sets AIDS research directives. From 2006 to 2015, he served as Chair of the amfAR Scientific Advisory Committee. Previously, he was a scientific board member of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Dr. Stevenson is a recipient of Harvard Medical School’s Shipley Lectureship, the Gertrude Elion Award, Schally Research Award, and Barcelona’s IRSI-Caixa award for accomplishments in AIDS research.

Professor, Department of Medicine, and Chief Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Miami.

Carine Van Lint is Professor at the University of Brussels (ULB, Belgium) and Research Director of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (F.N.R.S.). She is author and co-author of more than 130 international publications in the field of retrovirology and molecular biology. After performing her PhD thesis at the National Institutes of Health (NIH, Bethesda, USA) and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Picower Institute in New-York, she joined the Faculty of Science of the University of Brussels (ULB) as the Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Virology. Her research aims at studying the molecular and epigenetic mechanisms regulating transcriptional latency and reactivation from latency in 3 retroviruses: HIV-1 and two oncogenic retroviruses HTLV-I (human T cell leukemia/lymphoma virus type 1) and BLV (Bovine Leukemia Virus). Regarding HIV-1, one of the major objective of her laboratory is to design, based on transcriptional mechanisms, novel strategies to reduce the pool of latent reservoirs to a level bearable by the host immune system.