HIV & Hepatitis B virus: translating science into medical benefit

HIV & Hepatitis B virus: translating science into medical benefit

Speaker: Anna Maria Geretti, University of Liverpool

Host: Professor Michael Malim

The benefits of HIV therapy are tangible: treatment saves lives and makes HIV-positive people non-infectious to others. Reviewing the data behind the attention-grabbing headlines, we will discuss how we proved that treatment stops HIV transmission even when people engage in condomless sex. HIV and HBV are global killers that can be controlled – but not cured – with a daily antiviral tablet. Finding a cure is ambitious, but work is progressing. We will review HBV cure strategies that combine novel antivirals and immunomodulators and cutting-edge biomarker research that uncovers unknown aspects of HBV pathogenesis and provides a scientific underpinning to the clinical studies.

Speaker biography: 

Anna Maria Geretti – MD, PhD, FRCPath – is Professor of Virology & Infectious Diseases at the University of Liverpool and Consultant in Infectious Diseases at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

She also consults for the Academic Clinical Trial Unit of Brighton & Sussex Medical School and is Editor-in-chief of the BMJ STI Journal. Anna Maria trained in Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. While her clinical and research interests focus on HIV and viral hepatitis, her experience is broad, most recently including antiviral and immunomodulatory drug development within industry, design of first-in-human clinical trials, phylogenetic studies of HIV transmission, and epidemiology research with the World Health Organisation and in the field in sub-Saharan Africa. Anna Maria’s research is primarily aimed at translational applications and has led to over 250 peer-reviewed articles, editorials, reviews, and book chapters. Her ambition is to turn her multifaceted experience into the delivery of an impact that promotes the progress of medicine and science and is globally beneficial to public health and patient care.