The Carols Swarts, MD, Distinguished Lecture will be delivered on Monday, Oct. 30, by two of the world’s leading HIV/AIDS researchers.
The sponsor, the UNMC Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience, is honored to feature the scientific team of Robert Siliciano, MD, PhD, and Janet Siliciano, PhD, said Howard Gendelman, MD, chair of the department. Their research laboratories are at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and their studies focus on strategies that are hoped to someday lead to an HIV cure.
The event will be held from 12:45-1:45 p.m. at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, room 101. Box lunches will be provided to the first 100 attendees.
The Silicianos have been at the forefront of HIV/AIDS research for more than two decades. Their research was among the first to demonstrate how HIV persists in its tissue reservoirs and ultimately how it may be eliminated, Dr. Gendelman said. Today, the Silicianos laboratories are at the forefront of research seeking a cure for HIV infection.
Dr. Robert Siliciano is an immunologist and virologist recognized for his work identifying and characterizing the HIV latency in natural viral target cells that include resting CD4+ T cells. The cell reservoir is the major barrier to curing HIV infection and the subject of an intense international research efforts.
Dr. Janet Siliciano’s work is directed at viral persistence and long-term stability of the latent HIV reservoir. This work established that eradication of HIV-1 with antiretroviral therapy alone would not be possible and led to a major change in treatment strategy that will be presented.
The Sicilianos are not the first HIV pioneers to delivers the Swarts lecture; Robert Gallo, MD, the co-discoverer of HIV, delivered the Swarts lecture in 2015.