Dr. Ho has been actively engaged in AIDS research for 26 years and has published more than 350 papers on the subject. Work in Dr. Ho’s lab helped pioneer the field of quantitation of HIV in infected people. In the last decade, his research team extended this work and revolutionized the paradigm for AIDS pathogenesis by demonstrating the highly dynamic nature of HIV replication in vivo. This research remains a major interest of the lab, and ongoing studies now aim to delineate the kinetics of decay of various compartments that harbor HIV. Their studies of HIV dynamics formed the foundation for combination antiretroviral therapy, which Dr. Ho helped to champion. Such treatment approaches have led to dramatic reduction in AIDS-associated mortality.

Currently, a major focus of the Ho lab is using vaccines to induce immune responses that could block HIV or SIV transmission. Dr. Ho is pursuing multiple vaccine strategies, including DNA and live virus vectors such as vaccinia and adenovirus. This effort has been successful in inducing high levels of cellular immunity in animals, and Dr. Ho’s lab has moved into clinical trials to assess vaccine safety and immunogenicity. To supplement these vaccine approaches, they are also manipulating the viral envelope glycoprotein to determine whether neutralizing antibodies could be induced. Under a Vaccine Discovery Center grant from the Gates Foundation, Dr. Ho’s vaccine research and development efforts include new strategies that will target HIV and other viral antigens to dendritic cells to elicit better immune responses.

Dr. Ho is also involved in addressing the spread of AIDS in China. The disease has reached epidemic proportions in that country, and Dr. Ho and his colleagues have established a number of initiatives to address the problem, including public education to raise awareness and to fight stigma and discrimination. In addition, they are involved in the delivery of effective antiretroviral therapies and in the implementation of measures to block mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Furthermore, his team is helping to prepare a number of sites in the Chinese province of Yunnan to conduct future HIV vaccine trials.

CAREER

Dr. Ho received his undergraduate degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1974 and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1978. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine in 1982, and then held a fellowship in infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School until 1985. He has held academic appointments at Harvard Medical School, the UCLA School of Medicine, and the New York University School of Medicine, where he also served as director of the Center for AIDS Research from 1994 to 1996. Dr. Ho has been scientific director and chief executive officer of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center since 1990 and was named professor and physician at Rockefeller in 1996.

In 2006, Dr. Ho was a recipient of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant for HIV vaccine research. Among his numerous honors, he received the Edward Ahrens Award in Clinical Investigation and the Friendship Award from the State Council of the People’s Republic of China in 2003, and was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001. Dr. Ho received the Hoechst Marion Roussel Award (now the Aventis Award) in 1999, the Squibb Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 1996, the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology in 1993 and the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine in 1991. He was a scientific honoree of the New York Academy of Medicine in 1998, and Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1996. He is also the recipient of 10 honorary doctorates. Dr. Ho is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the Academia Sinica, as well as a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.