HIV, Hepatitis, Vaccines and Immune Recovery
Rob Striker, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist whose research aims to improve therapy for human infectious diseases.
Research Overview
Dr. Striker's current research interest focuses on immune recovery from chronic viral illness—particularly, but not exclusively, HIV.
Chronic viral illness leads to multiple immunological imbalances. The most extensively studied is a preponderance of CD8 over CD4 cells in HIV, but to a lesser extent, this also happens with Hepatitis B, cytomegalovirus, and possibly human papillomavirus. An unbalanced immune system responds less well to vaccines.
While much of the world’s HIV research community is focused on an HIV cure, knowing that the cure is durable will be challenging. Dr. Striker is focused on how to more effectively monitor and promote immunologic recovery, and why does it not reliably occur. He studies who is appropriate for anal cancer screening (because lack of immune recovery heightens risk) and STDs in general.
Dr Striker also studies human toxoplasmosis. Almost a third of the world has been exposed to this apicomplexian parasite and some percentage of those harbor what is likely a life-long but difficult to detect cyst infection in their heart and brain. Dr Striker is developing novel detection methods.