HHMI Profiles in HIV/AIDS Research and Innovation

Witness to a Pandemic Bruce D. Walker, an HHMI Investigator since 2002, had been a practicing physician in the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic, before the virus even had a name. But the virus ultimately defined his career. Says Walker, “There are places in the world where this epidemic is still raging, and I think people don’t fully understand that. A lot of people think that this is a problem that’s been solved and it’s unfortunately still a problem that needs scientific focus and advancement to ultimately conquer.” Learn more about Bruce Walker’s inspiration and work Chasing an Elusive Virus In the mid-1980s, HHMI Investigator Robert F. Siliciano began studying a relatively new pathogen as a postdoc. When he began his own lab, he focused exclusively on the virus: HIV. “Through collaboration,” Siliciano says, “we can take advantage of all of the vaccine knowledge and infrastructure and technological capabilities that have grown in the last 40 years.” Meet Robert Siliciano and explore his work Addressing a Global Plague In 2008, HHMI Investigators Bruce Walker and William R. Jacobs, Jr. made an unusual ask to the HHMI Board of Trustees: funding for a facility to revolutionize AIDS treatment in an area where the virus still raged: Durban, South Africa. Says Dennis McKearin, HHMI Scientific Officer who was the acting director for the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH) for three years: "You can see what people in resource-limited environments achieve and be impressed with the breakthroughs they make. It’s remarkable, but it also underlines the importance of giving them more to work with. In Durban, we helped to build a scientific enterprise that could train a lot of African and South African scientists." Learn about HHMI’s support of the K-RITH Understanding Immunity As a postdoc studying immune system response to pathogens, HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow Jeannette Tenthorey realized HIV was a fruitful field of research. Her work shows how much is left to understand about the virus. “HHMI scientists are encouraged to ask different questions than other people in our fields,” says Tenthorey. "We’re free to understand our work from a different angle, which in HIV and AIDS means we can study broader elements of the virus without feeling pressure to find a cure and create a drug." Explore Jeannette Tenthorey’s journey and work New Frontiers Inspired by the work of HHMI Investigators, Hanna Gray Fellow Christopher Barnes and his lab focus on studying how HIV makes first contact with host cells – and how the immune system responds. “This field requires a lot of creativity,” says Barnes. “There are new ways to think about HIV, technologies that did not exist even three years ago when I started my lab at Stanford." Learn more about Christopher Barnes' work