Dr. Blankson is an infectious diseases fellow at the Johns Hopkins University and has spent the last three years working with his mentor, Dr. Robert Siliciano on HIV-1 latency and HIV-1 specific immunity. Through this award, Dr. Blankson hopes to conduct basic science research relating to these topics as a faculty member in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins. He plans to characterize the latent virus isolates and HIV-1 specific immune responses of HIV-1 infected patients who spontaneously control viral replication. His hypothesis is that these patients form a heterogeneous group; some patients are infected with attenuated virus, others are infected with fully pathogenic virus but are able to control viral replication with vigorous HIV-1 specific immune responses. He plans to isolate latent virus from these patients and then to perform genotypic and phenotypic studies to assess the replication fitness of these isolates. He also plans to characterize their HIV-1 specific immune response with a special focus on identifying CD4+ and CD8+ T cell epitopes. The sequence of autologous latent virus at these epitopes will be analyzed for evidence of selective pressure exerted by the immune system. Dr. Blankson will attend basic immunology and virology seminars as well as clinical medicine and infectious diseases conferences. This along with the excellent mentorship of Dr. Siliciano, and the supportive environment of the Johns Hopkins University will provide Dr. Blankson with the skills he needs to develop into an independent clinician and basic scientist researcher in HIV-1 pathogenesis.
