Alan S. Perelson

My research focuses on studying the within host dynamics of pathogens such as HIV, HCV, HBV, WNV, and influenza. I have developed viral kinetic models that describe acute infection kinetics, viral sequence evolution as well as the kinetics of the response to antiviral therapy.  For HCV, my models have allowed one to access the in vivo effectiveness of new antiviral agents with very short clinical trials (days) and make predictions about the success of therapy. In the case of HIV, my recent interests involve methods of cure and my recent work has involved modeling post-treatment control of HIV, the effects of latency reducing agents, such as HDAC inhibitors, the effects of checkpoint inhibitor monoclonal antibodies, such as anti-PD1 or anti-PD-L1, and the effects of monoclonal broadly neutralizing antibodies used for treatment. I am also modeling the coevolution of HIV and antibodies by somatic hypermutation in order to understand why it is so difficult to generate broadly neutralizing antibodies.