Matthew R. Reynolds
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Microbiology & Immunology
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) holds HIV in check but does not eliminate it. A small pool of quietly infected cells, the latent reservoir, persists through treatment and can restart virus growth once drugs are stopped.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biology
- Topics
simian immunodeficiency virus
latent reservoir
HIV cure
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2027
What they work on
- 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.
- Count how many individual latently infected cells actually reactivate after treatment stops, by establishing reservoirs with genetically barcoded SIV, where each virus carries a unique DNA tag.
- Test whether antiviral immunity induced by a recombinant rhadinovirus encoding near full-length SIV changes time to rebound and post-treatment viral control in macaques carrying 5x10^4 versus 1x10^3 latently infected cells.
- Evaluate the mathematical model prediction that reservoir size determines whether immune responses can control virus replication once antiretroviral therapy is withdrawn.
More about the research
Cure strategies aim to shrink that pool and strengthen antiviral immunity so people could safely pause therapy. A basic unanswered question is how small the reservoir must become before treatment interruption yields a meaningful drug-free period, and what role immune responses play in holding the virus down afterward. Mathematical models predict that reservoirs of hundreds to thousands of latently infected cells are enough to bring the virus back within months, but testing these predictions in people is difficult because reservoir sizes vary between patients and are extremely hard to measure accurately.
Why it matters
Cure research for people living with HIV needs a target: how far an intervention must reduce the hidden viral reservoir to deliver a worthwhile period off daily medication. By setting reservoir size precisely in a macaque model, this work could supply benchmarks that clinical trials of latency-reducing or immune-boosting therapies can aim for, and clarify whether vaccine-induced antiviral immunity helps keep virus suppressed after treatment is stopped.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
James Whitney
Boston College, MA·Microbiology & Immunology
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.
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.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
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