Charles Rinaldo
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Microbiology & Immunology
People with HIV are now living long lives on antiretroviral therapy, the drug treatment that keeps the virus suppressed. Yet many still show ongoing immune dysfunction and develop age-related diseases earlier than expected.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
people with HIV
COVID-19 vaccine
SARS-CoV-2
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Mar 2032
What they work on
- Measure neutralizing antibody function and B lymphocyte responses after Pfizer or Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in 200 men and women with HIV and 50 HIV-negative controls from the MWCCS.
- Characterize immune cell types, soluble blood markers and functional T-cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 before and after vaccination in people with and without HIV.
- Test whether COVID-19 vaccination changes the amount and composition of the persistent HIV reservoir, the pool of hidden infected cells, in people on antiretroviral therapy.
- Apply machine learning to the combined antibody, cellular and reservoir data to predict COVID-19 vaccine response and find the parameters that most influence it.
- Define how viral persistence, immune responses, the microbiome and psychosocial factors interact to drive aging-related, pulmonary, sleep and cardiovascular disease in the Pittsburgh MWCCS cohort.
More about the research
Two connected efforts study how HIV shapes the immune system and long-term health over time. Both draw on the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study (MWCCS), a long-running group of men and women with and without HIV. One effort runs Pittsburgh's MWCCS site, and the other tests how well COVID-19 vaccines work in people with HIV.
Why it matters
People living with HIV are told to get COVID-19 vaccines, but there are few data on how well these vaccines work given their ongoing immune dysfunction. Measuring the strength and duration of vaccine responses, and building a model that predicts them, could guide public health policy for COVID-19 prevention in this group. Long-term cohort work could also clarify why people with HIV develop lung, heart and sleep disorders as they age.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Deborah R. Gustafson
SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology
Investigate cardiovascular and pulmonary (heart and lung) health outcomes in people living with HIV, using decades of follow-up data from the Brooklyn site of the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study (MWCCS).
Cecile Lahiri
Emory University, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Test whether markers of HIV persisting in rectal tissue are linked to whole-body inflammation, immune activation, and the presence and progression of early, symptom-free heart disease, using repeated heart imaging and paired blood and rectal biopsies in about 100 virally suppressed people with HIV.
Daniela Frasca
University of Miami, FL·Microbiology & Immunology
Evaluate how aging changes the blood metabolite profile of people with HIV and how this relates to the function, features and gene activity of B cells, T cells and monocytes, using MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study (MWCCS) samples.
The school
University of Pittsburgh: 83 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 403 research doctorates a year.
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