| HPP is
dedicated to understanding host-pathogens interactions in HIV and tuberculosis
infections, particularly immune responses and to the training of globally
competitive African scientists. Ndung’u, his team and their collaborators are
currently studying how certain individuals are able to resist HIV-1 infection despite
evidence of persistent exposure and how certain HIV-1 infected people are able
to achieve relative control of HIV-1 replication. The knowledge gained from
studies of people able to resist or control HIV-1 may eventually be used to
develop novel vaccines or therapies against HIV and AIDS. He and
his team have recently shown that during the early phases of HIV-1 infection, before
full seroconversion has been achieved, the body is unable to mount detectable cellular
immune responses to some viral epitopes despite the presence of wild-type virus
sequences that should induce such an immune response, based on patterns of responses
seen in chronically infected persons. They also
demonstrated that genetic polymorphisms in the immunoregulatory cytokine inter leukin
10 (IL-10) may affect the quality of immune responses, providing mech-anistic
evidence of earlier observations that IL-10 geneticvariation
can influence HIV infection outcome. Further,
they have explored the consequences of immune-driven sequence variation for the
virus and clinical disease outcome. Using a population of over 400 chronically
infected people, they showed that recombinant viruses constructed using
patient-derived Gag-protease proteins can differ widely in their replicative
fitness. Viral fitness varied significantly across different immune genes
called HLA-B class I alleles and viral fitness differences correlated with disease
outcome. These studies have shed new light on how a vaccine may be designed to
attenuate the virus. In other
studies, they have described emerging patterns of drug resistance among
children and adults in KwaZulu-Natal. A graduate of the University of Nairobi
and Harvard University, Ndung’u is a molecular virologist by training based at
the Doris Duke Medical Research Institute at UKZN’s Nelson R Mandela School of
Medicine. In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious Vice-Chancellor’s award for
exceptional research and research-related scholarly activities. He was
previously awarded the Edgar Haber Award (Harvard University) for outstanding
doctoral thesis research. Ndung’u’s
previous significant accomplishments include the development of the first
full-length infectious clone of HIV-1C from Africa, an important reagent for
detailed genetic studies of this strain. This genetic tool allows for various
studies on drug sensitivity and vaccine design to be conducted. He is also
credited with the generation of the subtype C simian human immunodeficiency
virus (SHIV), a genetic chimera between HIV and SIV vaccine tests. Ndung’u’s
main research interests are in the host-virus interactions underlying HIV and
AIDS pathogenesis and antiviral immune responses. He is also interested in the development
of biomedical interventions that can be used in resource-limited settings to
stop the spread of HIV and AIDS. He has a
special interest in the training and development of young scientist
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