Clive Gray, MSc, PhD
Chair and Head of Division of Immunology, Department of Pathology
Member, Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM), Faculty of Health Sciences, UCT
Visiting Professor, South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape
Visiting Professor, Department of Immunology, Duke University, North Carolina, USA

Clive Gray has published numerous papers on identifying T cell responses to HIV in early and acute infection. His particular interest lies in understanding the immunopathogenesis of HIV and what constitutes survival and differentiation of antigen-specific memory CD4 and CD8 T cells, and what would be required with vaccine-induced immunity.

During his postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for AIDS Research, Stanford University, USA, Clive was one of the first to do research on the restoration of immunity in HIV-infected individuals receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy and then to examine the specific nature of T cells using MHC tetramers. He returned to South Africa in 1998 and built up an internationally recognised immunology laboratory at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Johannesburg. Clive played a formative role in the South African AIDS Vaccine Initiative (SAAVI) and has been part of the SAAVI development team for the DNA and MVA candidate vaccines that have now completed clinical trials in the USA and South Africa. He was the Principal Investigator for the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) immunology laboratory in Southern Africa, where he was responsible for measuring vaccine immunogenicity in clinical trials in the region.

In 2004, he received the International Leadership Award from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation for developing Immunopaedia, an on-line learning website to simplify immunology for paediatricians and clinicians in general (www.immunopaedia.org.za).

Projects in the HIV Immunology Group focus on different properties of T cells, the epitopic regions that are recognized during early infection, how they contribute to homeostatic balance and ultimately how this balance is disrupted upon HIV exposure and infection. The projects are highly collaborative within the IDM/UCT and across multiple international groups and the overall focus is on defining biological risk factors for HIV acquisition.