Grazia Abou Ezzi, PhD

Grazia Abou Ezzi, PhD

Grazia Abou Ezzi, PhD, who recently joined Dr. Moriya Tsuji's laboratory at ADARC, came to New York to follow a passion that grabbed her while still in high school, when a teacher explained in simple way the role of dendritic cells. "Once I learned about their major role in modulating and orchestrating the immune response, I became obsessed," Dr. Abou Ezzi says.

A native of Lebanon, Dr. Abou Ezzi studied Biochemistry at Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, then moved to France for two Master's degrees (Genetic, Development and Immunology) and PhD in Microbiology and Immunology. Her studies focused on Osteoimmunology, particularly "Immunology of dendritic cells and monocytes in the bone marrow."

Dr. Abou Ezzi's obsession with the immune system will serve her well at ADARC. She was happy to join Dr. Tsuji's team, who has been working on developing a humanized mouse model by injecting human hematopoietic stem cells into immune-deficient mice. Some of the questions that can be explored using this model include how the bone marrow can keep reservoirs of latent HIV-infected CD4 T-cells for a long period of time, even when a patient is under treatment. "The dendritic cells/monocytes residing in the human bone marrow may play a role in protecting both our own cells and enemies such as HIV and other viruses, and cancer cells from the rest of host immunity," said Dr. Abou Ezzi.

Nina Gnädig, PhD

Nina Gnädig, PhD, who recently joined Dr. Theodora Hatziioannou's laboratory as a post doctoral fellow, became interested in viruses as an undergraduate because of the way they are able to escape the human immune system's defenses. Though her work did not focus on HIV/AIDS at first, she changed directions because of the challenge that the epidemic still poses even after decades of research "HIV is a very specific threat to mankind. The virus is still a major health care problem, and we need to come up with more innovative strategies to prevent infection and transmission," she said.

Dr. Gnädig grew up in Munich, Germany, and studied Biology in Berlin and Paris. After getting her Master's degree in Virology, she received her PhD from the Pasteur Institute, where she focused on small RNA viruses (Polio and Coxsackie), studying their in vivo evolution during infection.

At ADARC, Dr. Gnädig will be able to contribute directly to the effort to find new techniques to prevent HIV infection. "When I read about Theodora Hatziioannou's project to develop an animal model for HIV infection to be able to test HIV vaccines and prevention strategies, I felt that this will be very useful for future research on this virus," Dr. Gnädig said. She is now trying to optimize HIV-1 genomes so they will be able to infect pigtail and rhesus macaques and mimic key features of human HIV infection in those animals.

You can support Dr. Abou Ezzi and Dr. Gnädig's work by making a donation to ADARC.