Our main areas of activity are:

– Epidemiology, drug resistance and evolution of HIV, HCV and HBV

– HIV-2 infection (diagnosis, pathogenesis, natural history, neutralizing antibody response)

– Design and pre-clinical evaluation HIV vaccines and microbicides

– Design and pre-clinical evaluation of antiviral drugs

See interview filmed in February 2019

We study the disease burden, epidemiology, drug resistance and evolution of HIV, HCV and HBV and, occasionally, other viruses such as the Yellow fever virus, adenovirus and SARS-Cov-2. Disease burden studies are done in the context of the Global and Local Burden of Disease Injuries and Risk Factors Study of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation of the University of Washington, USA (1). Molecular epidemiology, evolution and drug resistance studies rely on the sequencing of all or parts of the virus genomes and subsequent phylogenetic, phylodynamic and phylogeographic analysis of the sequences (2,3). Drug resistance studies help the HIV clinicians to track adherence levels to antiretroviral therapy and to offer the best therapeutic regimens to their patients (2). In parallel, in collaboration with medicinal chemistry groups around the country and abroad, we design, develop and/or evaluate, in vitro and in vivo in different animal models, HIV vaccine candidates, microbicides and antiviral drugs (4, 5). These compounds are expected to lead to new antiviral medicines.