Dr Hao Lu (Dept of Infectious Diseases) received the Young Investigator Award at the Conference for Retrovirology and Opportunistic Infections 2013. See his poster abstract, Mechanism of HIV Latency and Reactivation. He is working on how histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) stimulate latent, or resting, HIV to become active. Histones are proteins which structure DNA. HDACs are enzymes which allow histones to wrap DNA more tightly.HDACis block the wrapping action, and affect gene expression, hence their interest for Hao's project of 'waking up' resting HIV. HDACis are being investigated worldwide for their possible therapeutic application, not only for HIV, but for cancers and inflammatory diseases.
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