HIV: The Battle for Immune Control
| Dates: | 29 January 2014 |
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| Times: | 12:00 - 13:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Faculty of Life Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | Current University students, University staff |
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| Speaker: | Professor Sir Andrew McMichael, FRS |
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This seminar is part of the Leaders in Science Seminar Series. HIV-1 is a persisting lentiviral infection; there is no known instance of spontaneous virus elimination. Therefore it poses very difficult challenges for vaccine design. Examination of the virus itself and acute HIV-1 infection reveals the reasons why immune control is so difficult. The virus can hide in silent proviral reservoirs, which are established early in infection. Further, by means of the Nef protein, it down-regulates expression class 1 HLA molecules though incompletely.Also and most critically it can escape normal control mechanisms, particularly by CD8 T cells, by mutation. Nevertheless some patients do control the virus for long periods; this is very HLA type dependent and examination of T cell responses restricted by these HLA types gives some encouragement that either very long term control or even elimination might be achieved by vaccination.
Host Professor Daniel Davis
Speaker
Professor Sir Andrew McMichael, FRS
Organisation: Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford
Travel and Contact Information
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LT3
Stopford Building
Manchester
