Adriana Weinberg
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Microbiology & Immunology
Some people's immune systems do not protect them as well as expected, and the reasons are often invisible in a routine blood test. Two such groups anchor the work here: infants born to mothers with HIV who are not themselves infected, who nonetheless get severe infections more often in their first years of life, and adults with failing kidneys, who respond poorly to vaccines precisely when they most need protection.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Pharmacology
- Topics
HIV-exposed uninfected infants
gut microbiome
respiratory microbiome
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Define the immune defects of HIV-exposed uninfected infants by profiling function, phenotype, transcriptome and epigenome of natural killer and T cells at 6, 24 and 48 weeks of life, compared with HIV-unexposed infants.
- Integrate infant immune profiles with plasma metabolomics to identify circulating small molecules associated with loss of NK and T cell effector function, and confirm those relationships in vitro.
- Compare gut and respiratory microbiome composition and function between HIV-exposed uninfected and unexposed infants to identify bacterial taxa linked to the immune and metabolomic abnormalities.
- Test whether pasteurized fermented milk given to pregnant people with HIV in the last month of pregnancy, or to 6-month-old HEU infants for four weeks, shifts the infant gut microbiome and metabolome, in two randomized proof-of-concept trials.
- Identify pre-vaccination immune cell, inflammatory and metabolomic profiles that predict reduced persistence of responses to the recombinant zoster vaccine in end-stage renal disease, using flow cytometry and single-cell immunogenomics in 50 ESRD and 50 healthy older adults.
- Determine whether a third dose of recombinant zoster vaccine restores durable immunity in 30 kidney transplant recipients, analyzing the T-cell repertoire to track persistence of vaccine-expanded T-cell clones under different immunosuppression induction regimens.
More about the research
Both projects combine detailed immune profiling with measurements of metabolites — small molecules circulating in blood that reflect metabolism and microbial activity — to find the modifiable factors behind weak immunity, and then test interventions.
Why it matters
Infants born to mothers with HIV number in the millions worldwide and face excess infections, hospitalizations and deaths in early life; identifying the gut bacteria and metabolites behind their immune defects could lead to simple dietary interventions during pregnancy or infancy. Separately, people with end-stage renal disease and kidney transplants are both highly vulnerable to shingles and poorly protected by the vaccine; finding actionable inflammatory or metabolic factors, and showing whether a third vaccine dose helps, could guide better immunization schedules for immunocompromised patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Developing Interventions for Protecting HIV-Exposed Uninfected Infants against Severe Infections
NIH · Aug 2024 – Jul 2029
PERSISTENCE OF IMMUNE RESPONSES TO THE RECOMBINANT ZOSTER VACCINE IN IMMUNE COMPROMISED HOSTS WITH END-STAGE RENAL DISEASE WITH AND WITHOUT KIDNEY TRANSPLANTATION
NIH · Mar 2019 – Feb 2029
Closest labs
Christiana Smith-Anderson
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Microbiology & Immunology
Profile gene expression in maternal and fetal cell types within placentas from pregnancies with HIV, with SARS-CoV-2 or with no infection, using single-cell spatial transcriptomics, which maps gene activity while keeping cells in place in the tissue.
Dean Johnson
University of Rochester, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Design a two-stage hemodialyzer using COMSOL Multiphysics modeling. A 100-nm-pore nanoporous nitride (NPN) sheet separates plasma from blood cells, and a 20–30-nm-pore sheet dialyzes the plasma.
Sara Lewis
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether a non-contrast multiparametric MRI protocol combining T1 relaxometry and IVIM diffusion imaging can detect and stage scarring (IFTA) in transplanted kidneys, compared against biopsies.
The school
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus: 41 labs on PI Pages, $766M a year on research, 205 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus
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