"Linking HIV immunology and epidemiology" by Prof Angela McLean

Past Event

Date
08 November 2012, 2:00pm - 3:00pm

Location

This lecture is hosted by the Plants for the 21st Century Institute, an Oxford Martin School Institute

Summary: Studies of the natural history of HIV infection within infected individuals show how the virus evolves to escape from the selection pressures imposed by immune responses. Carefully interpreted, such data can teach us about the strength of those immune responses. Data on the within-host evolutionary dynamics of HIV is hard to gather and contingent on having samples from the precise weeks and months when new variants are growing out. It is much easier to gather data on the population-level prevalence of immune escape mutants. I will present a mathematical model that allows us to "integrate up" the impact of many within-host events to find the expected epidemiological patterns of escape mutant prevalence, both in hosts of different types and changing through time. This is a model that lets us make inferences about the rate of evolutionary change within individuals from data on the prevalence of escape mutants within populations.

Speaker: Professor Angela McLean, Co-Director, Institute for Emerging Infections, an Oxford Martin School Institute

Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Plant Sciences, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB