Ariel Halper-Stromberg

Presented by Michel C. Nussenzweig

B.S., University of Maryland, College Park

Therapeutic Uses of Broadly Neutralizing Anti-HIV-1 Antibodies in Humanized Mice

Ari Halper-Stromberg grew up in Maryland and went to college at the University of Maryland, College Park. Because of his interest in science, Ari spent two of his college summers doing research on HIV-1 in Sriram Subramaniam’s lab at the National Institutes of Health. Sriram’s laboratory focuses on understanding the structure of the HIV-1 spike, a problem that is directly related to vaccine development. Ari’s work at NIH inspired him to pursue science and join the M.D.-Ph.D. program after college, and eventually to join my laboratory to continue to work on HIV-1.

HIV-1 is currently a lifelong chronic disease that cannot be cured because drugs cannot eliminate the virus from a so-called latent reservoir. For his thesis, Ari decided to try to explore the possibility that the immune system might be used to try to cure HIV-1, using humanized mice as a model. This is in some ways akin to the latest immune-based cancer therapies that use the immune system to attack cancer cells. His approach required the use of newly available monoclonal antibodies against HIV-1 combined with a shock to induce the virus in latent cells. Although this was only effective 60 percent of the time, it was the first experiment ever to show that the immune system might be used to eliminate HIV-1. His experiment was published in Cell, and a clinical trial is planned to attempt the same experiment in humans.

Ari is a fabulous individual who, in addition to his interest in science, has incredibly diverse hobbies and skills: he brews his own beer, roasts his own coffee beans, and is an exceptional baker and an athlete. He is an avid cyclist, a tough mudder, and a spartan racer. For those of you like me that did not know what a tough mudder or spartan racer is, those are marathons that include a very serious obstacle course.

Ari will now be returning to Cornell to finish up medical school. His colleagues and I will deeply miss his insightful analytical and quantitative approach to science.