Internships

Edward Lee ’12

I did a laboratory research internship at Instituto de Salud Carlos III in Spain. I worked in the AIDS Immunopathology Unit, which develops new and efficient systems to analyze the characteristics and factors of virulence in viral strains from HIV-infected patients such as tropism, replicative capacity, drug resistance and susceptibility to neutralising antibodies. These in vitro models are based on the generation of replicative-competent chimeras carrying different genomic fragments from HIV-1 that have been obtained from plasma of patients, and they are useful for the screening and characterization of the mechanism of action of new antiretrovirals and new approaches using this experimental model are currently being developed in the laboratory. In particular, I helped with analyzing the mechanism of action of a CCR5 antagonist (Maraviroc) and the mechanism of resistance of viral strains resistant to this drug.