The Ambrose laboratory studies HIV pathogenesis and therapeutics. We use both molecular and cellular retrovirology methods as well as in vivo models to address important questions about HIV infection and drugs for prevention and treatment.
Congratulations to Ella on successfully defending her MS thesis today! 🎉 🎈🍾 We are so proud of all the work she did over the past 3+ years as an undergraduate student and then a graduate student! She accomplished a lot in the lab from PCR mutagenesis and cloning to virus competition assays in primary CD4+ […]
Ella presented a poster at the 2026 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver. Her poster was titled “CA T107 polymorphisms in HIV-1 from lenacapavir-naive people living with HIV (PLWH) do not confer or enhance resistance.” Her research shows two polymorphisms in the CA protein, T107S and T107V, can be found in HIV-1 sequences […]
Zac successfully defended his PhD thesis in January entitled “Spatiotemporal binding of cyclophilin A and CPSF6 to capsid regulates HIV-1 nuclear entry and integration.” In addition to a review article in Viruses and research publications in mBio and Nucleic Acids Research, Zac had a couple of other projects that will be completed in the coming […]
Tuberculosis (TB), the disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is the most common infectious disease that causes death, responsible for 1.25 million deaths globally in 2023. HIV is the greatest risk factor for TB and HIV-M. tuberculosis co-infection causes worse clinical outcomes for both infections. Using a nonhuman primate model of both HIV and M. tuberculosis, […]
Hannah’s preprint is out now! Check it out here. We designed a reverse genetics platform for production of SARS-CoV-2 based on a mammalian-expression BAC encoding the complete virus genome, including insertion of a codon-optimized nano-luciferase (nLuc) gene. This allows production of reporter virus by direct transfection into cells or by transfection of in vitro synthesized […]
HIV encodes a protein that forms a conical shell, called a capsid, that surrounds its genome. The capsid has been shown to protect the viral genome from innate immune sensors in the cell, to help transport the genome towards and into the nucleus, to keep the components of reverse transcription together for conversion of the […]
Like many U.S. labs, our lab relies on NIH funding for our research. NIH funding creates jobs, medicines, and economic growth. The third highest disease-related cause of death in Pennsylvania is COVID-19. In addition to HIV research, our lab studies SARS-CoV-2 biology with the ultimate goal of finding better treatments for COVID-19 and future coronavirus […]
The Phd Program in Microbiology and Immunology (PMI) at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has a booth at ABRCMS 2024! Please stop by Booth #1012 and pick up some goodies and a brochure and say hi to the current director (Dr. Ambrose) and the immediate past director (Dr. Binder)! Please join us at […]
Both Chandra and Zac traveled to Palm Springs, CA for the 28th West Coast Retrovirus Meeting in October. Chandra spoke about his work on comparing different humanized mouse models for our HIV-1 studies on novel ART and PrEP. His talk was entitled “Development of humanized mouse models without fetal tissues for HIV-1 mucosal transmission and […]
Jessica recently was awarded a NIH F31 fellowship grant entitled “HIV/Mycobacterium tuberculosis co-infection: cellular dynamics in granulomas.” This will fund the rest of her PhD studies as well as the rest of her medical school education. Jessica is using spatial transcriptomics and immunofluorescence imaging of granulomas to understand how HIV alters host immune responses to […]
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