HIV virus model

The program in immune monitoring is led by Drs. Kent Weinhold and David Montefiori, who direct the cellular and neutralizing antibody components of the NIAID HIV Vaccine Trial Network (HVTN) Central laboratory. Dr. Weinhold is eminent in developing techniques and measuring human immune responses to HIV vaccines. With his colleague, Guido Ferriari, Dr. Weinhold directs the HVTN Central Laboratory and supervises the immune monitoring of HIV vaccine trials around the world.

David Montefiori’s expertise is in developing assays to measure HIV neutralizing antibodies and, as such, heads the HVTN Neutralizing Antibody Core Facility Laboratory. Working with investigators around the globe, Dr. Montefiori leads the field in understanding and developing appropriate ways for measurement of HIV neutralizing antibodies and as well as in designing experiments to clearly define the correlates of protective immunity of HIV infection at both systemic and mucosal sites. The immune monitoring technologies available to DHVI investigators include sophisticated robotic equipment that can process high-throughputs analyses of cytokines, produce cells in ELISPOT assays, and perform high-throughput flow cytometry analyses of both animal and human specimens following vaccination.

Dr. John Whitesides heads the Flow Cytometry Core of the DHVI, while Dr. Greg Sempowski leads an immune reconstitution and immune monitoring development group for development of new assays for cytokine production of following vaccination.