NIH MERIT Award for Dr. Una O'Doherty
July 01, 2020
Una O'Doherty, MD, PhD, Professor and Director of the Stem Cell Laboratory, has received an NIH R37 MERIT Award through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the project "Determinants of Reservoir Contraction and Expansion in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro." The advent of antiviral therapy (ART) has revealed a treatment-resistant reservoir in CD4+ T cells capable of refueling HIV viremia when ART is stopped. The proposal by the O'Doherty lab studies why HIV reservoirs decay at different rates in HIV-infected individuals on antiviral therapy. Dr. O'Doherty hypothesizes that reservoir contraction and expansion occur simultaneously in all HIV-infected individuals making the reservoir appear stable and proposes to perturb these forces to identify the drivers behind them and to ultimately reduce the size of the HIV reservoir. The NIH MERIT (Method To Extend Research in Time) R37 Award is a prestigious award designed to provide stable, long-term funding support to outstanding, experienced investigators whose productivity and competence are distinctly superior. Among the current and former Department members whose work received a MERIT award designation are Drs. Malay Haldar, Peter Davies, Gerard Schellenberg, and John Q. Trojanowski.