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Dr. Sluis-Cremer's laboratory uses a multi-disciplinary approach that includes biophysics, biochemistry, virology, and analysis of clinical samples to gain insight into the mechanisms of action of antiretroviral drugs; antiviral and antimicrobial drug resistance; and understanding how HIV-1 persists in infected individuals despite potent antiretroviral therapy. His lab uses state-of-the-art biophysical methods, including transient kinetic and single-molecule fluorescence approaches, to define how small molecules affect retroviral enzyme function, the intramolecular protein conformational dynamics, and the intermolecular enzyme-substrate interactions. Dr. Sluis-Cremer's HIV-1 resistance research focuses on identifying drug resistance mutations that are selected in infected-individuals failing therapy, defining the mechanisms by which these mutations decrease drug susceptibility, and predicting how acquired or transmitted drug resistance mutations impact treatment options. His lab also studies antibiotic resistance and is exploring novel therapeutic approaches to reverse fosfomycin resistance. In regard to HIV-1 persistence, the lab focuses on characterizing the latent pool of HIV-1 infection that resides in resting CD4+ T cells, in particular the naive and central memory subsets, using novel primary cell models of HIV-1 latency and by studying purified subsets of the resting CD4+ T cell population from HIV-infected individuals on suppressive antiretroviral therapy.
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