Dr. Martins earned his undergraduate degree in Biology from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the laboratory of Dr. David Watkins. He has recently partnered with Dr. Farzan and Emmune to test the potential of AAV-mediated delivery of eCD4-Ig to prevent and treat perinatal HIV infection using the pediatric rhesus macaque model of HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Martins is currently an Assistant Professor in the Florida branch of Scripps Research and a part-time consultant at Emmune, Inc. Dr. Martins is passionate about HIV immunology, particularly the development of immune interventions for preventing and treating HIV infection. Harnessing the immune system to combat HIV faces formidable challenges, including our incomplete understanding of what constitutes efficacious HIV-specific T-cell responses. A common theme in Dr. Martins’s career has been the search for immune correlates of retroviral T-cell immunity in nonhuman primates. In this regard, his experiments have focused on two fronts: 1) designing and testing experimental AIDS vaccines in rhesus macaques; and 2) understanding why a fraction of HIV-infected humans and SIV-infected monkeys (collectively termed “elite controllers”) develop CD8+ T-cell responses capable of controlling viral replication in the absence of antiretroviral drugs.
Dr. Martins earned his undergraduate degree in Biology from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the laboratory of Dr. David Watkins. He has recently partnered with Dr. Farzan and Emmune to test the potential of AAV-mediated delivery of eCD4-Ig to prevent and treat perinatal HIV infection using the pediatric rhesus macaque model of HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Martins is currently an Assistant Professor in the Florida branch of Scripps Research and a part-time consultant at Emmune, Inc. Dr. Martins is passionate about HIV immunology, particularly the development of immune interventions for preventing and treating HIV infection. Harnessing the immune system to combat HIV faces formidable challenges, including our incomplete understanding of what constitutes efficacious HIV-specific T-cell responses. A common theme in Dr. Martins’s career has been the search for immune correlates of retroviral T-cell immunity in nonhuman primates. In this regard, his experiments have focused on two fronts: 1) designing and testing experimental AIDS vaccines in rhesus macaques; and 2) understanding why a fraction of HIV-infected humans and SIV-infected monkeys (collectively termed “elite controllers”) develop CD8+ T-cell responses capable of controlling viral replication in the absence of antiretroviral drugs.