University of Hamburg (Primary)

Marcus Altfeld, M.D., Ph.D., is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and serves as the Director of the Innate Immunity Program at the Partners AIDS Research Center and the Infectious Diseases Division at MGH. His laboratory has three major areas of interest: 1) the analysis of HIV-1-specific CD8+ T cell responses in acute HIV-1 infection, with particular focus on the mechanisms that determine the functionality and immunodominance of virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses during the initial phase of HIV-1 infection; 2) the analysis of innate immune responses in HIV-1 and Influenza infection, with particular focus on the role of NK cells and Toll-like Receptors; 3) the monitoring of changes in virus-specific T cell responses in HIV-1-infected individuals undergoing therapeutic immunizations to understand the immune correlates of viral control. In addition, his laboratory is studying the role of innate immune responses in the control of HIV-1 and Tb disease progression in collaboration with the HIV-1 Pathogenesis Program at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine (University of KwaZulu-Natal) in Durban, South Africa, and the ID Department at the Tangdu Hospital (4th Military Medical School) in Xi’an, China.