Our Science – Hamer Website

Dean H. Hamer, Ph.D.

Vaccine Branch Head, Gene Structure and Regulation Section Senior Investigator National Cancer Institute 37 Convent Drive Building 37, Room 6002, MSC 4255 Bethesda, MD 20892-4255 Phone:   301-402-2709 Fax:   301-402-3095 E-Mail:   deanh@helix.nih.gov

Biography

Dr. Dean Hamer received his B.A. from Trinity College in Connecticut in 1972 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1977. He has been with the Laboratory of Biochemistry since 1981, and is currently the chief of the Gene Structure and Regulation Section.

Research

There is a pressing need for new therapeutics for HIV/AIDS. Although currently available antiretroviral drugs can control viral replication and delay the onset of immune failure in most HIV-infected individuals, they do not completely eliminate the virus. Furthermore, there are no effective biomedical treatments to prevent new infections, which continue to accelerate world-wide. We are using molecular biology, protein engineering, and rational drug design to develop new therapeutics and preventatives for HIV. One project is to develop a strategy that will reduce the size of the latent reservoir of HIV that is responsible for viral persistence. This is accomplished by using synthetic analogues of diacylglycerol or histone deacetylase inhibitors to induce the expression of latent infectious virus, then killing the induced cells with targeted toxins that bind to the viral envelope protein. A second project is to develop live microbes that can prevent new HIV infections by secreting anti-HIV peptides onto the mucosal surfaces of the vagina and rectum, the major sites of HIV transmission. We have demonstrated the feasibility of this live microbicide approach by genetically engineering a commensal strain of bacteria to secrete high levels of an HIV fusion inhibitor both in vitro and in vivo.

This page was last updated on 6/11/2008.