Working with a network of collaborators at Duke, Harvard, NIH and UPenn, Kshitij, now a staff scientist at LBNL, investigates how a subset of HIV-infected individuals develop desirable cross-reactive antibodies during the course of infection, and uses that information to inform HIV vaccine design. In their recent study, Kshitij and his collaborators discovered that the sugars on the surface protein of HIV from the infecting virus plays a key role in the development of cross-reactive antibodies in HIV infections.

Kshitij was recently awarded a LANL LDRD grant to further develop modeling of sugar profiles of HIV proteins, and is applying for NIH funding to design vaccines based on their work to be used in animal and eventually preclinical and human clinical trials.

For more information, see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124718315584 and https://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-stories-archive/2018/October/1023-hiv-vaccine.php

(1-22-2019)