Dr Boritz's research group works to understand how medically important viruses persist within each person.  In pursuing this goal, we emphasize the comprehensive analysis of samples taken directly from people living with virus infections.  Our focus is on the development and application of cutting-edge technologies that take account of the heterogeneity among individual virus-infected cells or virus genomes.  This seminar will present new insights into barriers to HIV cure and into the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern that have arisen from this approach.

Dr. Boritz began his HIV research career in the mid-1990s as a summer student in the laboratory of Dr. John K. Rose. An interest in fundamental and translational studies of host-virus interactions then led him to pursue combined M.D./Ph.D. training at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. He completed his Ph.D. in the Immunology Program studying HIV-specific CD4 T cell responses with Dr. Cara Wilson. After an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he joined NIAID, NIH USA as a fellow in infectious diseases. Following the clinical portion of his fellowship, he joined Dr. Daniel Douek's laboratory at Vaccine Research Center (VRC), where his work investigated the cellular and molecular events that allow HIV reservoirs to persist in vivo.
 
Since 2017, Dr. Boritz has served as head of the VRC Virus Persistence and Dynamics Section (VPDS).  VPDS was established to help develop means of targeting virus reservoirs and reducing disease progression in people living with HIV. One path toward this goal is to clarify the fundamental biology of HIV persistence during antiretroviral therapy (ART). Motivated by the genetic and functional diversity within key cellular reservoirs for the virus, VPDS develops and applies high-throughput methods for characterizing large numbers of single cells and viruses in great detail. Topics under investigation include the unique genetic programs expressed by infected cells; heterogeneity among individual infected cells as measured using “omics” tools; and the use of virus genetic analysis to detect critical events that may not be directly observable in vivo. VPDS investigates these issues both in individuals treated with standard-of-care ART and in study participants receiving experimental HIV cure-directed therapies.
 
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, VPDS also began to apply core laboratory technologies to SARS-CoV-2 and other emerging viruses.  These studies aim to define mutational properties and patterns of in vivo genetic variation that may help understand the potential of emerging viruses to acquire resistance against immune responses and medical countermeasures.