Golnaz Vahedi, an assistant professor of genetics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has received the Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH) award from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, an independent foundation based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, dedicated to advancing the biomedical sciences. Dr. Vahedi is one of nine recipients selected from 157 nominees nationwide.

Under the grant, Dr. Vahedi will work to uncover how lentiviruses change the linear and three-dimensional organization of the host genome, findings which could pave the way to understand how HIV persistence occurs.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has dramatically reduced morbidity and mortality for people living with HIV by effectively suppressing viral replication to undetectable levels in plasma. However, ART does not eradicate HIV. The major obstacle to cure HIV is that the virus establishes stable reservoirs of persistently-infected cells. Exactly how HIV can evade immune surveillance remains poorly understood.

Dr. Vahedi and her laboratory will seek to devise novel epigenetic technologies to decipher how lentiviruses such as HIV hijack the 3D genome architecture of host cells.

PATH provides $500,000 over a period of five years. The awards are intended to give recipients the freedom and flexibility to pursue new avenues of inquiry, stimulating higher risk research projects that hold potential for significantly advancing understanding of how infectious diseases work and how health is maintained.