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DERYA UNUTMAZ, M.D.
Skype status: Offline
The article
Frogs may aid in HIV fight: study said
A new weapon in the
battle against HIV may come from an unusual source —
a small tropical frog.
Investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center reported this month
in the Journal of Virology that compounds secreted by frog skin are
potent blockers of HIV infection...
"The peptides appear to selectively kill the virus, perhaps by inserting
themselves into the HIV outer membrane envelope and creating 'holes' that
cause the virus particle to fall apart", Unutmaz said.
"We like to call these peptides WMDs — weapons of membrane
destruction",
Unutmaz said. It is curious that the antimicrobial peptides do not harm
the T cells at concentrations that are effective against the virus, he
noted, since HIV's outer membrane is derived from, and therefore
essentially identical to, the cellular membrane. The investigators have
proposed that the peptides act selectively on the virus in part because
of its small size relative to cells.
Derya Unutmaz, M.D. is
Associate Professor of Microbiology at
New York University School of Medicine
where his research specialty is the
molecular machinery of T cell activation, differentiation, survival
and its exploitation by HIV.
The first long-term focus of the
Unutmaz Laboratory is to understand
how T cells
compute and
integrate the signals from the environment to initiate different effector
functions or differentiation programs. The complex signaling machinery of
T cells allows the immune system to have a flexible and vigorous response
against different pathogen challenges.
The second and major focus of this laboratory is to understand how HIV
exploits T
cell activation and differentiation for its own survival. HIV has
infected over 60 million and killed more than 20 million individuals
worldwide. The infection continues to spread exponentially and kills 3
million people every year. Massive efforts over the past 20 years have
failed to produce an effective and urgently needed vaccine.
Derya is coauthor of
Nonrandom HIV-1 infection and double infection via direct and
cell-mediated pathways in
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS),
Perturbation of natural killer cell function and receptors during HIV
infection in
Trends in Microbiology,
HIV infection of naturally occurring and genetically reprogrammed
human
regulatory T-cells in
PLoS Biology,
and
Compartmentalization of T lymphocytes to the site of disease:
intrahepatic CD4+ T cells specific for the protein NS4 of hepatitis C
virus in patients with chronic hepatitis C in
The Journal of Experimental Medicine.
See his full list of publications!
He is also
interested in the development of human lymphocytes from stem cells and to
understand immunological senescence during aging. This is
relevant to HIV research because this virus perturbs the immune
system such that it resembles an accelerated aging of the
immune system. He is developing a variety of genetic tools, such as
lentiviral vectors and
RNA interference technologies, to modify and
reprogram the human immune system cells such as T lymphocytes. He
hopes to be able to translate these approaches to patients in the near
future with the aim to boost responses to infectious organisms,
prevent autoimmune diseases and regenerate aged immune
systems.
Derya earned his M.D. from
Marmara
University in Turkey in 1991. He runs the news site
Biosingularity:
Advances in biological systems.
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