March 17: The 12th IRCMS Seminar "How does HILV-1 persist and cause disease?"

March 4 2016

We'll have the 12th IRCMS seminar as followings. We hope many of you to join this seminar!

Titel:         How does HTLV-1 persist and cause disease?

Speaker:  Professor Charles R M Bangham, B.M., Ph.D.

                 Division of Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Medicine,Imperial College London

Date:        Thursday, March 17, 2016

Time:        16:00 - 17:00

Venue:     2F Seminar Room, Center for AIDS Research (CAIDS)

Abstract:

     Human T lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1), which causes disabling or fatal diseases in 10% of people it infects, is often found in over 5% of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in the infected host.  A person with a high proviral load (a high percentage of infected PBMCs) is at high risk of these HTLV-1-associated diseases.  The question arises:  how does the virus persist at such a high abundance in the host?  We are testing the hypothesis that the proviral integration site in the human genome determines the pattern and intensity of proviral transcription and therefore determines the abundance and pathogenesis of the infected T cell clones. Evidence will be presented in this seminar.