Heads of Laboratories
Senior Physician; Irene Diamond Professor
Scientific Director; Chief Executive Officer
Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center
dho@rockefeller.edu
Dr. Ho’s laboratory has focused on the pathogenesis of HIV infection, with particular emphasis on the dynamics of HIV replication in vivo. Currently, his group is investing substantial effort in the development of vaccines for HIV as well as in the development of innovative prevention strategies. Dr. Ho is also heading the China AIDS Initiative to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in China.
Dr. Ho has been actively engaged in AIDS research for 28 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. 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 in developed countries.
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 viral vectors such as vaccinia and yellow fever virus. His effort has been successful in inducing cellular immunity in animals, and Dr. Ho’s lab has moved two candidate vaccines into clinical trials to assess vaccine safety and immunogenicity. To supplement these vaccine approaches, lab members are also manipulating the viral envelope glycoprotein to determine whether neutralizing antibodies could be induced. Under a Vaccine Discovery Center grant from the Bill & Melinda 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.
The group’s latest focus is a novel approach to HIV prevention. They are studying the passive administration of a humanized monoclonal antibody, known as ibalizumab, that potently and broadly blocks HIV infection by binding to domain 2 of human CD4. Ibalizumab is already in clinical studies in HIV-infected individuals, showing a good safety profile and a well-documented antiviral effect. The role of this monoclonal antibody as a prophylactic against HIV infection in seronegative subjects is now being actively studied, including in pivotal clinical trials. In addition, his team is pursuing the use of gene transfer methods to express ibalizumab in vivo for use in HIV prevention.
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. His team is also helping prepare a number of sites in the Chinese province of Yunnan to conduct future HIV vaccine trials. All of these activities are carried out under the banner of the China AIDS Initiative.
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 Gates Foundation grant for HIV vaccine research. 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 New York City 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 12 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.
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