Dr. Robert Siliciano is a Professor of Medicine in the Infectious Diseases Department at Johns Hopkins University and co-lead of Project 3 for the Duke Center for HIV Structural Biology with his wife, Dr. Janet Siliciano.
For over 35 years, he has been involved in full time HIV research, much of which has focused on viral reservoirs. His laboratory was the first to demonstrate the presence of latently infected resting CD4+ T cells in persons living with HIV. This latent reservoir for HIV is now widely considered the major barrier to HIV cure and is the subject of an intense international research effort in which the Siliciano laboratory has played a significant role.
Much of the lab’s work has been focused on the dynamics of the reservoir, including the demonstration by his wife, Janet Siliciano, that half-life of the reservoir is so long that lifelong antiretroviral therapy will be needed to prevent viral rebound and disease progression. With respect to the current application, Janet has recently shown that autologous neutralizing antibodies block outgrowth of a substantial fraction of reservoir viruses, a finding that forms the basis of Project 3.