New strategies in dealing with vaccines for HIV is the topic of an unclassified Director’s Colloquium Tuesday (Jan. 17) by Dr. Bruce Walker, director of Partner's AIDS Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Walker will speak at 1:10 p.m., in the Physics Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3. Walker’s talk is entitled “Predictability in the Midst of Chaos: Immune Control and Immune Failure in HIV Infection.”
Walker’s talk focuses on strategies for creating a vaccine by overcoming the diversity of HIV infections due to the virus’s ability to mutate.
According to Walker’s abstract, current HIV vaccine strategies work to induce immune responses that will contain infection rather than prevent it. The nature of HIV leads it to mutate allowing infections to escape these vaccine-induced immune responses.
The identification of these mutations shows the potential for the definition of the virus being transmitted and the best immune response to counter the infection. These definitions create new strategies to deal with the viral diversity of HIV in developing a vaccine from data showing the predictability of HIV mutations and the body’s immune responses to them.
The Laboratory is working on vaccine strategies and is home to a worldwide HIV virus database with extensive information on the genetic structure of the virus, various strains and subtypes, and other information about HIV.
Walker has a duel appointment as the director of the Partners AIDS Research Center, and director of the Division of AIDS at Harvard Medical School where he is a professor of medicine. He obtained his undergraduate training at the University of Colorado and the Swiss Federal Technical Institute and his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
“Walker has worked extensively on the international front with collaborations in many countries. He has had a particular focus on developing state-of-the-art scientific centers to combat AIDS in South Africa, one of the worst-hit countries in the AIDS pandemic,” said Bette Korber of Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (T-10).
According to Walker’s bio, he spends the majority of his laboratory time analyzing the body's fight against chronic viral infections, with a focus on cellular immune responses to HIV and hepatitis C virus. He also is a clinician, with a specialty in infectious diseases, particularly the treatment of persons with HIV/AIDS.
Walker has been awarded the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Professorship and a Merit Award from the National Institutes of Health.
The talk will be shown live on LABNET Channel 9 and on desktop computers using Real Media Stream and IPTV technology.
For information about the Director's Colloquium series, go to http://stb.lanl.gov/colloquium/ online.
