The candidate is particularly interested in understanding the mechanism by which Hiv evades immune surviellance. An increased understanding of how this occurs may be critical for the development chemotherapeutics and vaccines. In the proposed research, cytotxic t lymphocytes (cTLs) isolated from Hiv postive patients will be tested for their ability tokill primary CD4 postive cell isolates infected with HIV. Career Devleopment Plan: Dr. collins will have no specific training activityes aside from the performance of research. She will participate in weekly laboratory meetings encompassing a broad range of research activities, as well as journal club and periodic scientific meetings. She will be encouraged to attend scientific seminars presented at MIT and surrounding institutes. Research Plan: the research plan takes a phased approach, starting with Hiv-1 infected t-cell lines and cloned DC8 cells. Then primary cells will be infected, purified, and used as targets. CD8 positive cells from Hiv-1 positive individuals will then be substituted for the CD8 clones. Finally, endogenous viruses from HIV-1 positive individuals will then be substituted for the CD8 clones. Finally, endogenous viruses from HIV-1 postive individuals will be engineered to express a selectable marker so that infected cells can be purified.
