Dr Bruce Walker

Lab Name: Walker Lab

Country: United States of America

Institution: Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard

Research Areas: Immunology, Medicine, Translational Research

Lab Website: www.ragoninstitute.org/portfolio-item/walker-lab

Bruce Walker seeks to determine how the immune system controls chronic viral infections and to augment antiviral immunity for therapeutic benefit. Despite dramatic clinical effects resulting from the advent of highly active antiviral therapy (HAART) for the treatment of HIV-1 infection, it is increasingly clear that viral eradication will be exceedingly difficult to achieve. Some persons, however, have now been infected with HIV for more than 30 years without developing progressive disease, and maintain low to undetectable viral loads in blood, even though they have never been treated with antiviral drugs. These persons seem to have achieved with HIV-1 what is achieved with other chronic viral infections such as Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV)—viral containment rather than eradication. Our goal is to perform patient-oriented research to understand the immune control of HIV and to use this information to develop interventions to induce immunologic control in persons with otherwise progressive infections.