Nuno Taveira

HIV evolution, epidemiology, and prevention

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.

Calado R, Duarte J, Borrego P, Marcelino J, Bártolo I, Martin F, Figueiredo I, Almeida S, Graça L, Vítor J, Aires da Silva F, Dias I, Carrapiço B, Taveira N. 2020. A prime-boost immunization strategy with Vaccinia virus expressing novel gp120 envelope glycoprotein from a CRF02_AG isolate elicits cross-clade tier 2 HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies. Vaccines (Basel). 2020 8(2), 171. DOI: 10.3390/vaccines8020171.
Bártolo I, Santos BS, Fontinha D, Machado M, Francisco D, Sepodes B, Rocha J, Mota-Filipe H, Pinto R, Figueira ME, Barroso H, Nascimento T, Alves de Matos AP, Alves AJS, Alves NG, Simões CJV, Prudêncio M, Pinho e Melo T, Taveira N. Spiro-β-lactam BSS-730A Displays Potent Activity against HIV and Plasmodium. ACS Infect Dis. 2021 7:421-434. DOI: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.0c00768.
GBD 2019 Diseases and Injuries Collaborators. Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990-2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Lancet. 2020. 396:1204-1222. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30925-9.
Tzou PL, Descamps D, Rhee S-Y, Raugi DN, Charpentier C, Taveira N, Smith RA, Soriano V, de Mendoza C, Holmes SP, Gottlieb GS, Shafer RW. Expanded Spectrum of Antiretroviral-Selected Mutations in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 2. J. Infect. Dis. 2020. 12: 1962-1972. DOI: 10.1093/infdis/jiaa026.
Deng X, Achari A, Federman S, Yu G, Somasekar S, Bártolo I, Yagi S, Mbala-Kingebeni P, Kapetshi J, Ahuka-Mundeke S, Muyembe-Tamfum J-J, Ahmed AA, Ganesh V, Manasi Tamhankar M, Patterson JL, Ndembi N, Mbanya D, Kaptue L, McArthur C, Muñoz-Medina JE, Gonzalez-Bonilla CR, López S, Arias CF, Arevalo S, Miller S, Stone M, Busch M, Hsieh K, Messenge S, Wadford DA, Rodgers M, Cloherty G, Faria NR, Thézé J, Pybus OG, Neto Z, Morais J, Taveira N, Hackett Jr. JR and Chiu CY. Metagenomic sequencing with spiked primer enrichment for viral diagnostics and genomic surveillance. Nature Microbiology. 2020. 5:443-454. DOI: 10.1038/s41564-019-0637-9.

Nuno Taveira

Group Leader

Email: ntaveira@ff.ul.pt

Phone:

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Come meet us at

Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade de Lisboa | Av. Professor Gama Pinto
1649-003 Lisboa | Portugal


Phone | +351 217 946 400
Fax | +351 217 946 470
Web | www.imed.ulisboa.pt
Email | imed.ulisboa@ff.ulisboa.pt

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