| Start Date: | 10/10/2014 | Start Time: | 4:00 PM |
| End Date: | 10/10/2014 | End Time: | 5:30 PM |
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Event Description
Will Dampier, PhD, research assistant professor in the department of microbiology and immunology in Drexel's College of Medicine, will discuss how human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) still affects over 35 million patients worldwide. Over the past 30 years, the development of dozens of therapeutic agents has transformed this disease from an acute to a chronic disease. Current therapeutic strategies rely on inhibiting viral entry, reverse transcription, viral integration, and budding and maturation of new virions. However, due to the genetic variability of HIV and the evolution of escape mutants, as well as the establishment of viral reservoirs within days of the initial infection, it is becoming clear that the current therapeutics will never eradicate the virus from an infected patient. New advances in excision therapy show promise in actually removing the integrated virus from latently infected cells. Recently, researchers from Temple University showed that HIV could be excised from cell lines using the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) system. This technique holds promise in excising HIV from a patient's genome; however, as with any new technology, there are many open questions. This seminar will discuss how investigators working in our laboratories can target the CRISPR system within the highly variable viral genome, while avoiding off target effects as facilitated by advances in sequencing technology and bioinformatics algorithms in an effort to eradicate HIV-1 from a patient. For more info, please visit: www.biomed.drexel.edu. |
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Location:
Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building (PISB), Room 120, located at the corner of 33rd and Chestnut Streets. |
Audience:
AlumniInternational StudentsCurrent StudentsFacultyProspective StudentsPublicStaffGraduate Students |
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