Hot topics in HIV – Vaccines, immune recovery and eradication 2023

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

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.

Ángel Bayón Gil obtained a degree in Biotechnology from the University of Salamanca (USal) in 2017. He completed his studies with an MSc in Advanced Microbiology from the University of Barcelona (UB) in 2018.

He started his research career in 2016 working as an internship student at the Biomedical Research Institute – INIBIC (A Coruña, Spain). He contributed to develop new diagnostic techniques for microbial infections and studied the mechanisms of tolerance and bacterial persistence. In 2017 he carried out his Degree’s Final Project at the Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León – INCyL (Salamanca, Spain), where he studied the cytoskeleton and its implication on the uptake of serum albumin in a Down Syndrome cell model.

In 2018 he joined the Retrovirology and Clinical Studies group at AIDS Research Institute – IrsiCaixa (Barcelona, Spain) for his Masters’ Final Project on the dynamics of HIV-1 reservoir in early-treated patients. He later conducted a PhD in the same group, where he focused on the characterization of an extreme phenotype of HIV infection known as Viremic Non-Progressors (VNPs). During his PhD, Ángel made contributions to both national and international conferences, performed an internship at The Wistar Institute (Philadelphia, US) and collaborated in different projects on HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis.

Professor, Department of Microbiology

Perelman School of Medicine

University of Pennsylvania

The goal of our scientific research is to gain an understanding of the nature of T cell immune responses to viral pathogens and auto-antigens in humans. Our recent work focuses on the study of T cell responses in human and nonhuman primate lymphoid tissues and fluids, including various regional lymph nodes, spleen, thoracic duct lymph fluid, and oral lymphoid tissues in the context of HIV/SIV infection, vaccination, diabetes, and multi-centric Castleman’s disease. Towards this end, we have developed and adapted many immunological assays for the study of viral-specific immune responses in humans, including intracellular cytokine staining, CTL epitope mapping, CD8+ T cells degranulation measurement, and polyfunctional flow cytometry that are broadly used by the global human immunology research community. This research has allowed us to begin to dissect the mechanisms that control CD8+ T cell effector function in the human and nonhuman primates using a combination of cellular and molecular immunology, including the characterization of CD8 effector lineage-defining transcription factors, factors controlling expression and function of CD8+ T cells, transcriptional analysis of CD8+ T cells, tissue-resident memory T cell responses, and in vivo assessments of T cell dynamics in non-human primates.

Dr. Maria J. Buzon is the head of the Infectious Diseases Research Group at the Vall d´Hebron Research Institute (Barcelona, Spain). She obtained her Ph.D. in 2010 at IrsiCaixa and completed her postdoctoral training at the Ragon Institute, where she was promoted to Instructor in 2014. Since 2015, Dr. Buzon leads her current laboratory, which is focused on the characterization of the HIV reservoir in blood and tissues, and the design of new immunomodulatory strategies directed to reduce this reservoir. Besides, Dr. Buzon has been a recipient of several awards, including the “International Raising Talents 2016” award from the L´Oreal-Unesco For Women in Science Foundation.

Adam Castillejo, also known as “The London Patient”, is the second person known to have been cured of HIV infection. Castillejo is a British-Venezuelan man who lives in London and trained as a chef and is now working as a motivational speaker. He is of mixed Spanish-Dutch European ancestry.

In 2016 he received a bone marrow transplant to treat an aggressive Stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The donor carried the CCR5-delta 32 mutation, which confers resistance to HIV infection.

The approach, although effective in his case, was intended to cure his cancer and is not a practical option for the widespread curing of HIV because of the risks involved but it is proof of concept on the HIV-Cure related research studies.

Sara Moron-Lopez obtained a degree in Biotechnology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2011, an MSc in Biomedicine from the University of Barcelona in 2012 and an MSc in AIDS Pathogenesis and Treatment from Gimbernat – Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2014. After receiving a grant for the recruitment of new research staff (FI 2013) from the Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (Catalan Government), she launched her career in HIV research and joined Javier Martinez-Picado’s team at IrsiCaixa in 2013. She obtained a PhD in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biomedicine (Honours) from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2016. A year after completing her PhD, Sara moved to the University of California San Francisco (San Francisco, California, USA) to continue her post-doctoral research on HIV field.

Since early 2021, she came back to IrsiCaixa to work in Javier Martinez-Picado’s team on the mechanisms that regulate viral persistence.

Michaela Müller-Trutwin holds the position of Professor at Institut Pasteur where she heads the “HIV, Inflammation and Persistence” Unit. She studied Biology at the University in Bonn. She obtained her PhD from Paris-University, France (Barré-Sinoussi lab). She worked at Research institutes in West- and Central-Africa. Among other duties, she serves as the coordinator for HIV basic research at the French Agency for Research on HIV and emerging diseases (ANRS-MIE), Vice-president of the Scientific Council at Institut Pasteur and Steering Committee member at IDMIT (French NHP research center). Her team made key contributions on the role of inflammation in HIV pathogenesis and on the impact of early virus-host interactions on the outcome of HIV infection. The lab is currently focused on deciphering host immune responses involved in viral reservoir control with the aim to foster the development HIV remission strategies. They uncovered an important role of natural killer cells in the control of SIV replication in tissues. Her work has been honored by awards, such as by the French Medical Research Foundation.

Jose A. Muñoz-Moreno, PhD (he/his) is clinical and health psychologist at the Infectious Diseases Department of the Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol and an associate professor at the Psychology and Education Sciences Faculty of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

José earned his PhD in Neurosciences from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). He leads he “Brain Function, Emotion, and Behaviour” research group at the Fundació Lluita contra la SIDA (FLS). His main focus is on the study of neurocognitive and emotional disorders in infectious diseases, particularly HIV and, recently, COVID-19 infections.

Born in Verona, Italy in 1957
Education
• 1982. M.D. degree, University of Ferrara, Italy (full marks cum laude).
• 1985. Specialist in Oncology, University of Ferrara, Italy (full marks cum laude).
Professional Career & Research Activities
• 1983-1985. Post-graduate fellow, Laboratory of Human Immunology (Head: Alberto Mantovani),
“Mario Negri” Institute for Pharmacological Research, Milano, Italy where he published some of the
earliest papers on monocyte and NK cell defects in HIV infection.
• 1986-1993. Visiting Scientist, Laboratory of Immunoregulation, NIAID, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA
(Head: Anthony S. Fauci) where he published several highly cited papers on the earliest in vitro
models of reversible HIV-1 latency by cytokines.
• 1994-to date. Head, AIDS Immunopathogenesis Unit (renamed “Human Immuno-Virology [H.I.V.]
in 2021), San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milano, Italy.
• Since 2002. Associate Professor of Pathology and Immunology, San Raffaele University School of
Medicine, Milano, Italy (promoted to Full Professorship in 2016). He is currently Chairman of the
Bachelor-equivalent Course of Biotechnological Research in Medicine.
• Since 2020. President, “Patto Trasversale per la Scienza” Association
(https://www.pattoperlascienza.it/)
To date, he has published 282 scientific papers (241 of which indexed by Scopus), mostly on the
pathogenesis of HIV infection, cumulating ca. 11,474 citations, a cumulative impact factor of ca. 1,380 and
an H-index of 58 (https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7201724419)
He also co-edited two books:
– Elisa Vicenzi & Guido Poli, Editors. “Human Retroviruses. Methods and Protocols” – Springer
Protocols, Humana Press, 2013. http://rd.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-62703-670-2
– Fabio Romerio, Elisa Vicenzi & Guido Poli, Editors. “HIV Reservoirs: Modeling, Quantification, and
Approaches to a Cure” – Springer Protocols, Humana Press, 2022.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-0716-1871-4
He is Associate Editor or Reviewer for several scientific journals and international funding agencies.
International Membership
Since 2011
• International AIDS Society (IAS): https://www.iasociety.org/guido-poli
• International Collaboration for the Genomics of HIV
Since 2017
• College of Reviewers, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
• Scientific Advisory Board of the Canadian HIV Cure Enterprise (CanCURE)
Awards
• NIH Award of Merit (1992)
• European Society for Clinical Investigations (ESCI) Award (1999)

Patricia Resa-Infante is a molecular virologist. Born in Barcelona, she completed her doctoral thesis at the National Biotechnology Centre (attached to CSIC). She launched her research career investigating the flu virus in two postdoctoral stays abroad: at the Heinrich Pette Institute/Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology in Hamburg (Germany), funded by a grant from the Humboldt Foundation; and at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Grenoble (France). She has also been on stays at other international centres, including the University of Oxford (UK) and Harvard Medical School (USA).

Since early 2018 she has been employed by IrsiCaixa, where she focuses on research into HIV-1 molecular capture and endocytic mechanisms in dendritic cells associated with the host-cell exosome pathway and continues her research into virus replication mechanisms aimed at developing new strategies to fight infectious processes.