James Whitney
Boston College, MA·Microbiology & Immunology
Antiretroviral therapy can drive HIV-1 down to undetectable levels in the blood, but it does not cure the infection. Intact, replication-competent virus hides inside long-lived immune cells, and when treatment stops, the virus comes back.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biology
- Topics
viral reservoir
latency
antiretroviral therapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Determine how early the persistent viral reservoir is established after SIV infection and how initiating antiretroviral therapy early limits seeding and expansion of cellular reservoirs.
- Test whether long-lived naive CD4+ T cells, which have not yet met their antigen, harbor intact and inducible provirus and act as a distinct proto-reservoir alongside memory CD4+ T cells.
- Compare reservoir formation and dynamics across anatomic tissues rather than blood alone, where knowledge of early reservoir seeding is currently limited.
- Assess which CD4+ T cell subsets drive viral rebound after cessation of antiretroviral therapy, including whether resistance to cytotoxic T lymphocyte killing allows infected naive cells to renew the intact reservoir.
More about the research
This hidden pool, the viral reservoir, is the main obstacle to curing HIV or achieving lasting remission off drugs. The question driving this project is how the reservoir is first seeded and which cell types are responsible, because a reservoir you cannot locate is a reservoir you cannot clear.
Why it matters
Most people with HIV who stop antiretroviral therapy experience returning virus within weeks, which is why treatment is lifelong. Clarifying which CD4+ T cell subsets seed the reservoir early, where they sit in tissues, and which drive rebound could guide cure strategies and therapies intended to let patients remain in remission without continuous medication.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Matthew R. Reynolds
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how long virus takes to rebound after stopping antiretroviral therapy in rhesus macaques given defined reservoirs of 5x10^4, 1x10^4, 1x10^3 or 1x10^2 laboratory-generated, latently SIV-infected autologous cells.
Angela Raquel Wahl
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Microbiology & Immunology
Analyze how the HIV reservoir forms in the gastrointestinal tract of BLT humanized mice on antiretroviral therapy, measuring HIV DNA and transcripts in gut CD4+ T cells compared with blood.
Vijayakumar Velu
Emory University, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test how soluble IL-15/IL-15Rα-Fc, an immune-boosting cytokine complex, and galunisertib, a TGF-β pathway blocker, alone or combined, change T cell and natural killer cell subsets during chronic SIV infection in antiretroviral-treated rhesus macaques.
The school
Boston College: 11 labs on PI Pages, $96M a year on research, 161 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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