Determinants of HIV infection and rebound

Melissa-Rose is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Medical Virology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. Her postgraduate studies in Virology, also at UCT, began in the characterization of poxviruses and later transitioned to investigating the HIV transmission bottleneck. She obtained her PhD in 2014, investigating the evolution of transmitted HIV-1 in women from KwaZulu-Natal with differing disease progression profiles.
She currently overseas an HIV Cure research program at UCT, which includes studies characterizing the size and timing of establishment of the latent HIV reservoir and identifying viral factors that drive viral persistence, with a particular focus on African women.

Melissa-Rose is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Medical Virology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. Her postgraduate studies in Virology, also at UCT, began in the characterization of poxviruses and later transitioned to investigating the HIV transmission bottleneck. She obtained her PhD in 2014, investigating the evolution of transmitted HIV-1 in women from KwaZulu-Natal with differing disease progression profiles.
She currently overseas an HIV Cure research program at UCT, which includes studies characterizing the size and timing of establishment of the latent HIV reservoir and identifying viral factors that drive viral persistence, with a particular focus on African women.

Dre Madeleine Durand is a specialist in internal medicine and epidemiologist. She shares her time between patient care and research at the Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal and the CHUM Research centre. She is associate professor of medicine in Université de Montréal. She leads a collaborative research program aiming at identifying targettable pathways to curb the comorbidity risk for people living and aging with HIV.

Francesca Di Nunzio has led the Advanced Molecular Virology laboratory at Institut Pasteur's Virology department since 2022. Her research delves into the intricate mechanisms governing HIV-1 nuclear import and integration into the host genome. With a keen focus on cutting-edge imaging technologies, she tackles unresolved biological queries. Notably, Di Nunzio's group recently uncovered that a viral capsid can translocate into the nucleus and that the reverse transcription process can occur in the nucleus, challenging retrovirology "dogmas" established over 54 years since the discovery of reverse transcriptase. Her lab is now exploring the interplay between biomolecular condensates and HIV, marking a pioneering stride in understanding viral processes.
Francesca earned her Ph.D. in 2006 in gene therapy at the University of Verona, contributing to the first clinical trial to treat a patient affected by the Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa. Subsequently, she completed a three-year post-doc at DFCI, Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA.
Francesca is an author of 40 papers (EMBO J., JVI, Cell Host & Microbe, PNAS, JMCB, etc…). She is the last author of 16 of these papers.
She obtained the Prix Pasteur Vallery-Radot 2022 and her PhD student, Viviana Scoca, received the Prix L’Oreal for Women in Science 2022.
She gave more than 40 Oral Communications and invited presentations.
She has co-organized HIV 40 Years of Science at the Institut Pasteur, in December 2023, and the XVI HIV workshop in Rome, in September 2024.

Professor Sarah Palmer is the Co-Director of the Centre for Virus Research at The Westmead Institute for Medical Research and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, at The University of Sydney School of Medicine

Prior to taking up this position in early 2013, she was a Senior Researcher at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden from 2008 to 2012. From 2000 to 2008, she headed the Virology Core Facility of the HIV Drug Resistance Program, National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health, where she led efforts to develop and perfect highly-sensitive assays such as the single-copy assay and single-cell sequencing assay which provide new insights into HIV pathogenesis and persistence during long-term effective therapy.

Her principal areas of research interest focus on molecular and medical virology and the application of innovative techniques and assays which provide new insights into disease pathogenesis and treatment, especially for HIV and COVID-19. Her current work focuses on understanding the genetic characteristics and dynamics of persistent HIV across a range of tissues and cells to guide and assess treatment interventions designed to reduce persistent HIV reservoirs and inform HIV eradication strategies. Dr. Palmer has her Ph.D. in Medical Sciences (Virology) from the Karolinksa Institutet, and conducted her post-doctoral studies at the Center for AIDS Research, Stanford University Medical School.

Melissa-Rose is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Medical Virology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. Her postgraduate studies in Virology, also at UCT, began in the characterization of poxviruses and later transitioned to investigating the HIV transmission bottleneck. She obtained her PhD in 2014, investigating the evolution of transmitted HIV-1 in women from KwaZulu-Natal with differing disease progression profiles.
She currently overseas an HIV Cure research program at UCT, which includes studies characterizing the size and timing of establishment of the latent HIV reservoir and identifying viral factors that drive viral persistence, with a particular focus on African women.

Dre Madeleine Durand is a specialist in internal medicine and epidemiologist. She shares her time between patient care and research at the Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal and the CHUM Research centre. She is associate professor of medicine in Université de Montréal. She leads a collaborative research program aiming at identifying targettable pathways to curb the comorbidity risk for people living and aging with HIV.

Francesca Di Nunzio has led the Advanced Molecular Virology laboratory at Institut Pasteur's Virology department since 2022. Her research delves into the intricate mechanisms governing HIV-1 nuclear import and integration into the host genome. With a keen focus on cutting-edge imaging technologies, she tackles unresolved biological queries. Notably, Di Nunzio's group recently uncovered that a viral capsid can translocate into the nucleus and that the reverse transcription process can occur in the nucleus, challenging retrovirology "dogmas" established over 54 years since the discovery of reverse transcriptase. Her lab is now exploring the interplay between biomolecular condensates and HIV, marking a pioneering stride in understanding viral processes.
Francesca earned her Ph.D. in 2006 in gene therapy at the University of Verona, contributing to the first clinical trial to treat a patient affected by the Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa. Subsequently, she completed a three-year post-doc at DFCI, Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA.
Francesca is an author of 40 papers (EMBO J., JVI, Cell Host & Microbe, PNAS, JMCB, etc…). She is the last author of 16 of these papers.
She obtained the Prix Pasteur Vallery-Radot 2022 and her PhD student, Viviana Scoca, received the Prix L’Oreal for Women in Science 2022.
She gave more than 40 Oral Communications and invited presentations.
She has co-organized HIV 40 Years of Science at the Institut Pasteur, in December 2023, and the XVI HIV workshop in Rome, in September 2024.

Professor Sarah Palmer is the Co-Director of the Centre for Virus Research at The Westmead Institute for Medical Research and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, at The University of Sydney School of Medicine

Prior to taking up this position in early 2013, she was a Senior Researcher at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden from 2008 to 2012. From 2000 to 2008, she headed the Virology Core Facility of the HIV Drug Resistance Program, National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health, where she led efforts to develop and perfect highly-sensitive assays such as the single-copy assay and single-cell sequencing assay which provide new insights into HIV pathogenesis and persistence during long-term effective therapy.

Her principal areas of research interest focus on molecular and medical virology and the application of innovative techniques and assays which provide new insights into disease pathogenesis and treatment, especially for HIV and COVID-19. Her current work focuses on understanding the genetic characteristics and dynamics of persistent HIV across a range of tissues and cells to guide and assess treatment interventions designed to reduce persistent HIV reservoirs and inform HIV eradication strategies. Dr. Palmer has her Ph.D. in Medical Sciences (Virology) from the Karolinksa Institutet, and conducted her post-doctoral studies at the Center for AIDS Research, Stanford University Medical School.