International Workshop on Co-Morbidities and Adverse Drug Reactions in HIV

Plenary speakers

Learn more about the 2022 plenary presenters and read their biographies below.

Hypertension, HIV and kidney kisease in sub-Saharan Africa, key lessons
Robert Kalyesubula, Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Kampala Uganda and Yale University, USA

NASH biomarkers and new therapeutic options
Vlad Ratziu, Sorbonne University and Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, France

Obesity pathophysiology and therapeutics
Carel Le Roux, University of Dublin, Ireland

Roundtable: post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection
Chairs: Judith Currier, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA & Steven Deeks, University of California at San Francisco, CA, USA.
Speakers: Annie Antar, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA & Michael Peluso, University of California at San Francisco, CA, USA , Irini Sereti, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA & Robin Gorna, NHS Long COVID Taskforce, England.

Speaker biographies

Robert Kalyesubula,
Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Kampala Uganda and Yale University, USA

Robert Kalyesubula MD, PhD is a senior lecturer, nephrologist and Head of department Physiology at Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MakCHS). Dr Kalyesubula holds a medical degree and a masters of internal medicine from Makerere MakCHS and did part of his residence training in McMaster University in Canada. Kalyesubula completed nephrology training from Yale University in USA and earned a PhD in epidemiology of NCDs from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has worked on kidney disease and hypertension in resource limited settings for the last 12 years.

Dr Kalyesubula is the founder and president of Uganda Kidney Foundation, a researcher and mentor with over 80 peer reviewed publications. He is an adjunct Asst prof. at Yale University, University of Vermont, both in USA and McMaster University in Canada. He has been coordinating global health programs at MakCHS and ACCESS Uganda for the last 18 years.

Carel Le Roux,
University of Dublin, Ireland

Professor Carel Le Roux graduated from medical school in Pretoria, South Africa and completed his specialist training in metabolic medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospitals and the Hammersmith Hospitals. He completed his PhD at Imperial College London and was later promoted to Reader. Professor Le Roux moved to University College Dublin to fulfil the role of Chair of Pathology – he is now the Co-Director of the Metabolic Medicine Group. Professor Le Roux has received a President of Ireland Young Researcher Award, Clinician Scientist Award from the National Institute for Health Research (UK), as well as a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellowship for his work on how the gut talks to the brain.

Vlad Ratziu,
Sorbonne University and Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, France

Vlad Ratziu is a Professor of Hepatology at Sorbonne University, and performs his hospital work at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital and the Institute for Cardiometabolism and Nutrition (ICAN) in Paris, France. Professor Ratziu received his medical training at Paris Descartes University; he then complet ed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Liver Center at the University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA, and went on to earn a doctoral degree from Paris Diderot University for his work on the pathophysiology of viral and metabolic liver fibrosis.

Professor Ratziu’s main research interests are in the field of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD); the mechanisms, risk factors, and progression of liver fibrosis in viral and metabolic diseases; and the treatment of viral hepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma. He coordinated or participated in several therapeutic trials in NASH.

Professor Ratziu coordinated the Fatty Liver Inhibition of Progression consortium, a European financed FP7 programme which studies the mechanisms of liver disease progression in NAFLD. He is an active member of Horizon 2020 NASH Elucidating Pathways of Steatohepatitis and the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Liver Investigation: Testing Marker Utility in Steatohepatitis Consortia and EU-PEARL patient centric clinical trial platforms. Professor Ratziu is also a member of the organising committee of the NASH–TAG meetings. He is a Co-Editor for the Journal of Hepatology and an associate editor for Clinical Liver Disease, a member of the International Advisory Board de The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. He has published more than 340 articles in top-tier specialty journals.

Judith Currier
Univeristy of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Judith S. Currier, MD, MSc is Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Director of the Center for AIDS Research and Education Center and the Sue and Michael Steinberg Endowed Chair in Global AIDS Research in the Department of Medicine at UCLA. She is Chair of the NIH sponsored AIDS Clinical Trials Group and the Principal Investigator of the Leadership Operations Center (LOC) for the ACTG based at UCLA. She also serves as the Principal Investigator of the UCLA AIDS Prevention and Treatment Clinical Trials Unit based at UCLA. In March of 2020 she was appointed as a Member of the Therapeutics Working Group for the NIH Accelerating COVID -19 Therapeutics and Vaccines(ACTIV) Initiative. Her areas of research focus include understanding the pathogenesis and management of long term complications of HIV disease, specifically cardiovascular and metabolic complications associated with HIV treatment and on evaluating therapeutics for early COVID disease.

Steven Deeks
University of California at San Francisco, CA, USA

Steven G. Deeks, MD, is a Professor of Medicine in Residence at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a faculty member in the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

Dr. Deeks has been engaged in HIV research and clinical care since 1993. He is a recognized expert on HIV-associated immune dysfunction and its impact on HIV persistence (the “reservoir”) and health during antiretroviral therapy. Dr. Deeks published over 600 peer-review articles, editorials and invited reviews on HIV and related topics. He has been the recipient of several NIH grants, and is one of the principal investigators of DARE (the Delaney AIDS Research Enterprise), an NIH-funded international collaboratory aimed at developing a cure for HIV infection. He is also the principal investigator of amfAR Institute for HIV Cure Research and the co-chair of the “Towards an HIV Cure” International Working Group. Dr. Deeks was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and Association of American Physicians (AAP). He is the editor-in-chief of Current Opinion in HIV and AIDS and serves on the scientific advisory board for Science Translational Medicine and the advisory board for EBioMedicine.

In April, 2020, he leveraged his HIV research program to construct the “Long-term Impact of Infection with Novel Coronavirus (LIINC)” cohort, which is now supporting dozens of studies addressing the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on health.

Dr Deeks is a former member of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council (ORAC) and of the Department on Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents.

In addition to his clinical and translational investigation, Dr. Deeks maintains a primary care clinic for HIV infected patients.

Annie Antar
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

Dr. Antar is an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine whose research focuses on HIV reservoir studies and the pathogenesis of long COVID. She earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and an M.D./Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where her graduate work focused on mechanisms of pathogenesis of reovirus, which is a model system for double-stranded RNA viruses. She completed both her residency in internal medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Dr. Antar's research today focuses on understanding the manifestations and immune correlates of long COVID in people living with HIV. She is the PI of an amfAR-funded, national prospective observational cohort of COVID recovery in people living with HIV and HIV-seronegative people.

Michael Peluso
University of California at San Francisco, CA, USA

Dr. Peluso is an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco. Prior to COVID, his research focus was on the chronic sequelae of HIV infection and HIV cure clinical trials. When the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic emerged, Dr. Peluso led the efforts to implement the Long-term Impact of Infection with Novel Coronavirus (LIINC, pronounced “link”) study at San Francisco General Hospital, based on the hypothesis that COVID could have a long-term impact on health and well-being. LIINC was one of the first post-COVID cohorts in the U.S. and now includes hundreds of individuals with and without Long COVID, many of whom have been followed for more than 2 years. Dr. Peluso is also a co-investigator on a national amfAR-funded study of Long COVID in people with HIV and is responsible for implementation of the UCSF enrolling sites for the NIH’s RECOVER initiative.

Irini Sereti
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA

Dr Sereti is the Chief of the HIV Pathogenesis Section in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the Unites States. She received her Medical Degree at the National University of Athens in Greece and did her Internal Medicine residency and Chief residency at Northwestern University in Chicago. She completed her Infectious Diseases fellowship at NIAID and stayed as clinical investigator receiving tenure in 2015. Her group focuses on studies of HIV-associated inflammation and Idiopathic CD4 lymphopenia with some work on COVID pathogenesis, in both the clinic and the laboratory. Dr Sereti is a physician scientist, an ELAM fellow, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, and a member of the Executive committee of the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars program. She is passionate about translational research with excellence in patient care, mentorship, and promotion of women in biomedical sciences.

Robin Gorna
NHS Long COVID Taskforce, England

A writer and activist since the mid-1980s, Robin Gorna’s focus has been AIDS, women’s rights and advocacy. Since early 2020 this expanded to include COVID, especially learning from AIDS, and living with Long COVID. She is Vice Chair of the Technical Review Panel for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria; co-Chair of the Global COVID Communities Board and sits on NHS Advisory Groups to improve UK Long COVID services and awareness. Involved from the earliest days of the AIDS crisis, her book Vamps, Virgins and Victims: How can women fight AIDS? was one of the first to focus on women. Her leadership roles include founding the UK government’s global AIDS policy team and then leading their HIV & Health work in Southern Africa; co-founding the Women4GlobalFund and SheDecides movements; and serving as Executive Director of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, the International AIDS Society and Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (based at WHO). See: www.robingorna.com Robin Gorna, NHS Long COVID Taskforce, England.