Third Coast Center for AIDS Research (TC CFAR) Developmental Core Co-Director, Elena Martinelli, PhD, and her research team recently published in Nature Communications. Their paper details how blocking an immune cell singling pathway in a model of HIV-1 infection may boost immune responses and decrease viral persistence in combination with antiretroviral therapy. The findings improve the understanding of how the most common type of HIV (HIV-1) can evade and then attack the immune system, which could lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies for HIV.

Martinelli is a professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and of Microbiology-Immunology at Northwestern University, and senior author of the study. Co-authors of the study include Ramon Lorenzo Redondo, PhD, assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Yogesh Goyal, PhD, assistant professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, and Tom Hope, PhD, professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and director of the TC CFAR’s Viral Pathogenesis Core. Lorenzo Redondo and Goyal have both received TC CFAR pilot awards.

This research was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ grants R56AI157822 and R01AI176599.

Read more about Martinelli’s study in Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine News.