Thor Wagner, MD
Investigator, Center for Global Infectious Disease Research
Assistant professor, Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Washington

Dr. Wagner’s research is focused on pediatric HIV infection, which accounts for 15% of all HIV deaths. His primary interest is understanding chronic HIV infection during antiretroviral therapy. Specifically, why doesn’t antiretroviral therapy eradicate HIV infection? Is there ongoing viral replication? Is there proliferation of cells with viable proviral HIV? Can we identify the remaining infected cells? Is immune tolerance to HIV a barrier to curing HIV? Answers to these questions should help design new treatment strategies more likely to cure HIV.  Dr. Wagner’s other research interest is improving infectious disease diagnostics in low resource settings. Specifically, he is working to develop a point-of-care diagnostic test for infant HIV. Currently there is no simple test to diagnose infants with HIV, and 50% of HIV-infected children die before they can be diagnosed. To accomplish this hewe are utilizing state-of-the-art monoclonal antibody screening technology to optimize the sensitivity of immunoassays to detect HIV antigens.