Galit Alter, PhD is a Professor in Medicine at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard and leads a laboratory that collectively works towards the single goal of developing novel vaccine approaches aimed at recruiting and directing the antiviral activity of the innate immune system to kill virally infected cells. Dr. Alter received her PhD in Experimental Medicine from McGill University and performed her post-doctoral work under Dr. Marcus Altfeld at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Her current research interests lie at the intersection of the innate immune response and the adaptive humoral immune response, with a focus on defining the role of innate immune recruiting antibodies in providing specificity to the innate immune system to kill virally infected cells. Specifically, Dr. Alter’s work focuses on developing high-throughput assays aimed at dissecting the “protective profiles” and functional activity of polyclonal pools of antiviral antibodies induced via vaccination or during natural infection. To this end her laboratory has established high-throughput assays that simultaneously interrogate the functional activity of polyclonal pools of antibodies in tandem to defining the biophysical features of the most functional humoral immune responses. Together, Dr. Alter utilizes these data to then selectively purify the most “protective” antigen-specific B cells for RNA sequencing, to enable to production of the most potent therapeutic antibodies and to learn about the underlying mechanism by which protective B cell responses are programmed to aide in the development of next generation vaccines that may direct the antiviral activity of the innate immune response.

Systems serology: profiling vaccine induced humoral immunity against HIV. 
Temporal variation in HIV-specific IgG subclass antibodies during acute infection differentiates spontaneous controllers from chronic progressors.
Beyond binding: antibody effector functions in infectious diseases.
Plasma CXCL13 but Not B Cell Frequencies in Acute HIV Infection Predicts Emergence of Cross-Neutralizing Antibodies.
Systems serology for evaluation of HIV vaccine trials.

Dr. Paul E. Sax is Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the HIV Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sax received his MD from Harvard Medical School, then did his residency in Internal Medicine at BWH, while continuing his postdoctoral education with a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is Editor-in-Chief of Open Forum Infectious Diseases, is Section Editor of HIV/AIDS in UpToDate, on the Editorial Board of NEJM Journal Watch Infectious Diseases (where he writes the HIV and ID Observations blog), and on the editorial advisory board of Medscape HIV/AIDS. Dr. Sax is also on the core faculty of the International AIDS Society - USA and the New England AIDS Education and Training Center. In addition to his clinical practice and teaching, Dr. Sax’s ongoing areas of research include clinical trials of antiretroviral therapies, cost-effectiveness of management strategies for HIV, and toxicity of antiretroviral therapy. He is presently the principal investigator at the BWH AIDS Clinical Trials Unit, and is a member of the Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC) Research Group.

David A. Sinclair, Ph.D. is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging, Professor and Head of the Aging Labs at UNSW, Sydney. He is best known for his work on genes and small molecules that delay aging, including the Sirtuin genes, resveratrol and NAD precursors. He has published over 160 scientific papers, is a co-inventor on 50 patents, and has co-founded biotechnology companies in the areas of aging, vaccines, diabetes, fertility, cancer, and biodefense. He is co-chief editor of the scientific journal Aging and works with national defense agencies and with NASA. He has received 35 honors including the CSL prize, an Advance Global Award, an ASMR Medal, the NIH Director’s Pioneer award, a Member of the Order of Australia (Australia’s knighthood), and TIME magazine’s list of the “100 most influential people in the world”.

Dr. Bhasin is the Director of the Research Program in Men’s Health: Aging and Metabolism and the Director of the NIA-funded Boston Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center for Function Promoting Therapies at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He received his MD from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India, residency training at Northwestern University Medical School and fellowship training in Endocrinology and Nutrition at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA.

Dr. Lockman is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital and adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has conducted research in Botswana since 1996, focusing on prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV; antiretroviral treatment following PMTCT; understanding the role of HIV- and antiretroviral-exposure on the health and neurodevelopment of HIV-exposed/uninfected infants; and optimizing the health of HIV-infected mothers and HIV-exposed and infected children. She co-leads a Clinical Trials Unit that conducts HIV treatment and prevention trials among adults and children in Botswana and helps lead a community-randomized study of HIV-prevention interventions.

Neurodevelopment of HIV-Exposed and HIV-Unexposed Uninfected Children at 24 Months.
HIV Infection and Survival Among Women With Cervical Cancer.
Hidden in plain sight: HIV, antiretrovirals, and stillbirths.
Cancer Incidence following Expansion of HIV Treatment in Botswana.
Predictors of suboptimal CD4 response among women achieving virologic suppression in a randomized antiretroviral treatment trial, Africa.
Nevirapine- versus lopinavir/ritonavir-based initial therapy for HIV-1 infection among women in Africa: a randomized trial.
Treatment-for-prevention: clinical considerations.
Antiretroviral therapies in women after single-dose nevirapine exposure.

 

Dr. Ojikutu is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Associate Physician within the Division of Global Health Equity, Faculty within the Infectious Disease Division at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Adjunct Faculty at The Fenway Institute. She is also the Director of the Community Engaged Research Program within the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research. As of August 2018 she will be an Associate Director for the Bio-Behavioral and Community Science Core within the HU CFAR. Her research is focused on overcoming racial and ethnic disparities in access to HIV and STI prevention, care and treatment. Her NIH (NIMH) funded research is designed to determine the structural factors that promote HIV and STI risk among Black individuals in the US. She is also co-editor of a comprehensive textbook providing evidence based approaches to diminish racial and ethnic disparities in HIV in communities of color in the US (Springer). She is the co-PI of the National Survey on HIV in the Black Community (NSHBC) funded by the HU CFAR and formerly co-led the Health Equity Scientific Working Group. She is also on the leadership team for the Getting to Zero Statewide Initiative (to end the HIV epidemic) in Massachusetts.

 

Women, inequality, and the burden of HIV.

Ojikutu BO, Stone VE.

N Engl J Med. 2005 Feb 17;352(7):649-52. No abstract available.

 

Facilitators and Barriers to Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Use Among Black Individuals in the United States: Results from the National Survey on HIV in the Black Community (NSHBC).

Ojikutu BO, Bogart LM, Higgins-Biddle M, Dale SK, Allen W, Dominique T, Mayer KH.

AIDS Behav. 2018 Feb 21. doi: 10.1007/s10461-018-2067-8. [Epub ahead of print]

 

African born women living with HIV in the United States: unmet needs and opportunities for intervention.

Ojikutu BO, Nnaji C, Sithole-Berk J, Masongo D, Nichols K, Weeks N, Ngminebayihi M, Bishop E, Bogart LM.

AIDS Care. 2018 Jul 15:1-9. doi: 10.1080/09540121.2018.1497767. [Epub ahead of print]

 

HIV Testing Among Black and Hispanic Immigrants in the United States.

Ojikutu BO, Mazzola E, Fullem A, Vega R, Landers S, Gelman RS, Bogart LM.

AIDS Patient Care STDS. 2016 Jul;30(7):307-14. doi: 10.1089/apc.2016.0120.