Talk
Discontinuation, Suboptimal Adherence, and Re-Initiation of Oral HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis

Bio
Dr. Weiming Tang is an Associate Professor of UNC Chapel Hill , the Co-Director of UNC Project-China, and the Advisor of SESH Global. His training background is in the field of epidemiology, with an emphasis on HIV/STI epidemiology, study design, and data analysis. His research focuses on promoting HIV/STI testing and healthy behavior change among key populations. Specifically, he is interested in using crowdsourcing and other participatory methods to enhance health services. He has also co-authored more than 330 peer-reviewed publications.

Research Keywords
Epidemiology, HIV/STI Epidemiology, AIDS

Talk
Secretory IgA for Mucosal-Targeted HIV Prevention

Bio
Dr. Xueling Wu graduated from Tongji Medical College with a bachelor's degree in medicine and the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a PhD in Microbiology, studying systemic and mucosal antibodies to HIV. Xueling completed a postdoctorate with Julie Overbaugh at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where she examined the role of neutralizing antibodies in mother-to-child transmission of HIV and isolated the clade A Env BG505. In 2006, Xueling joined John Mascola's lab at NIAID Vaccine Research Center, where she isolated the broadly neutralizing antibody VRC01. In 2013, Xueling joined the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center as a faculty member, where she continued her work on HIV antibodies. Since 2020, Xueling has been an Associate Professor at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, Columbia University Medical Center, where she obtained multiple NIH-funded programs, of which one investigates HIV IgA antibodies. In December 2024, Xueling will move to Boston University School of Medicine to continue her pursuit of developing secretory IgA for mucosal-targeted prevention of HIV. Over the years, Xueling has fostered a wide range of collaborations, served with NIH study sections and scientific journals, and contributed to more than 50 scientific publications.

Research Keywords
HIV, HIV Antibodies, Vaccine

Talk
Cytotoxic Immunoconjugates for Eradicating Reservoirs of HIV Infection that Persist in the Face of Effective ART

Bio
Prof. Dr. Seth Pincus is a board-certified pediatrician but has devoted his career to the study and application of therapeutic antibodies. He is currently using antibodies to attack reservoirs of persistent virus infection—the topic of his talk in this webinar—and to protect against bioterrorist events. In the past, he studied why HIV vaccines fail to produce effective antibodies and showed the efficacy of antibodies for the treatment of neonatal infections in animal models.

Research Keywords
therapeutic antibodies, HIV vaccines, HIV

Talk
The Dialectics of Community Risk and Prevention in an Era of Emerging Disruptive Events

Bio
After 11 years as a sociology professor, Samuel Friedman moved into HIV research in 1983. He did this at the National Development and Research Institutes until he moved to NYU GSOM in 2019. As an HIV researcher, much of his research has been on how the virus spreads through communities, the sociopolitical conditions that make such spread more likely, and innovative ways through which people at risk can protect themselves and each other. Most of this research focused on people who use drugs, and as part of it, Samuel did what little he could to help PWUD organize themselves locally, nationally, and globally to protect each other. Samuel has also engaged in research with sexual minority men and women, with sex workers, and with others at risk, across a wide range of countries. His deepest engagements have been in New York and other North American localities, Spain, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Australia and, in the 21st century, Argentina, Greece, Ukraine, and South Africa. Much of his effort over the last ten years has concerned network approaches to prevention and the impact of Big Events on communities at risk and how they might prepare to react to such events.

Research Keywords
HIV/AID, STI, HIV Prevention

Talk
Novel therapies to prevent and treat HIV infection

Bio
After holding an investigator position in 2002, Dr. Freed joined the HIV Drug Resistance Program (HIV DRP, renamed the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program in 2015) as Head of the Virus–Cell Interaction Section in 2003 and was appointed to the NCI Senior Biomedical Research Service in 2011. Dr. Freed was later appointed Deputy Director of the HIV DRP in 2014 and Director of the Program in 2015. He was an organizer of the 2004 Cold Spring Harbor Meeting on Retroviruses, 2006 ASCB Conference "Cell Biology of HIV-1 and Other Retroviruses", 2012 Keystone Symposium "Frontiers in HIV Pathogenesis, Therapy and Eradication", 2014 Keystone Symposium "The Ins and Outs of Viral Infection: Entry, Assembly, Exit and Spread", Viruses 2016 Conference "At the Forefront of Virus–Host Interactions", Viruses 2018 Conference "Breakthroughs in Virus Replication", 2018 gp41 Cytoplasmic Tail Structure and Function Workshop, and Viruses 2020 “Novel Concepts in Virology”. He also served on the Scientific Committee of the International Retroviral Nucleocapsid Protein and Assembly Symposium in 2013, 2016, and 2019 and the Organizing Committee of the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Virology in 2018. He has served as co-organizer of the Annual HIV DRP Conference and Annual David Derse Memorial Lecture and Award since 2012 and organizer of the Annual George Khoury Memorial Lecture since 2014. Dr. Freed is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Viruses and was appointed Editor of Journal of Molecular Biology in 2012 and Editor of Recent Advances in HIV-1 Assembly and Release in 2013.

Research Keywords
HIV/AIDS, HIV dynamics, HIV replication