Visualizing the interface of HIV and the immune system with 3D multiscale tissue imaging
Collin Kieffer, PhD
Department of Microbiology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
HIV, the causative agent of AIDS, was discovered over 35 years ago and remains a global health concern with an estimated 37 million individuals currently infected worldwide. Despite extensive efforts, there is currently no cure for HIV and although antiretroviral therapy allows individuals with access to medicine to lead normal lives, the presence of a reservoir of latently infected cells that rebound upon
cessation of treatment requires infected individuals to remain on treatment indefinitely. Despite intensive research efforts, surprisingly little is known about the mechanisms of HIV dissemination and the organization of the latent reservoir of HIV infected cells in human patients at the resolution of individual infected cells and virions within intact tissues. In order to address these limitations, my lab is utilizing multiscale imaging approaches involving bioluminescence, tissue clearing, light sheet microscopy, and electron tomography to visualize mechanisms of HIV pathogenesis in tissues from animal models of HIV infection and in human patients at multiple levels of volume and resolution. These studies are both confirming and disputing long held views of HIV pathogenesis and can be applied to evaluate the effectiveness of new therapeutics.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019 at 12:00 PM
2506 Veterinary Medicine Basic Sciences Building
2001 South Lincoln Avenue, Urbana
For more information contact the Department of Pathobiology at 217-333-2449, email klp68@illinois.edu.
