The rockefeller university

Theodora Hatziioannou

In recognition of her outstanding contributions to the understanding and treatment of infections caused by the HIV-1 and SARS CoV-2 viruses, Theodora Hatziioannou has been promoted to research professor.

Hatziioannou has been a part of The Rockefeller University community since 2006, when she served as an assistant professor in the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC), then at Rockefeller. She has been a research associate professor in the Laboratory of Retrovirology which she co-leads with Paul Bieniasz since 2017.

Among her many research accomplishments, Hatziioannou developed a novel HIV strain adapted to macaques that allowed scientists, for the first time to follow the course of infection in a non-human primate model. This work was revolutionary, allowing vastly improved preclinical testing of antiviral drugs and vaccines against HIV-1 targets. This work contributed to the development of lenacapavir, a long-acting capsid assembly inhibitor now approved by the FDA for both antiretroviral treatment for HIV in combination with other medicines, and as a twice-yearly injectable drug for HIV prevention.

Her more recent work has exploited the differences between human and macaque immunity to uncover species-specific genes that inhibit HIV-1 replication, exploring the role of interferon receptors in viral replication and disease progression in animal models, and developing new protocols to guide the design of broadly neutralizing antibodies for HIV in humans.

Additionally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hatziioannou became a key member of a multi-lab project at Rockefeller to develop therapeutic antibodies to the novel coronavirus. She has since been at the forefront of efforts to develop vaccines able to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies capable of targeting a wide range of SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as work on novel antiviral therapies that target viral receptors on host cells such as ACE2 that is required for SARS-CoV-2 entry into cells.

Hatziioannou received her Ph.D. in retrovirology and gene therapy from University Claude-Bernard Lyon 1 in France followed by postdoctoral research with Stephen P. Goff at Columbia University Department of Microbiology & Immunology prior to coming to Rockefeller. Her work is highly cited, and she has a long history of NIH funding and mentorship. She is also an author of the field’s comprehensive textbook, Principles of Virology.