Associate Professor Paul Cameron

• Key Achievements
• Publications
• Projects
• Research Groups

• Key Achievements

  • As a postdoctoral, Paul published seminal papers on blood and skin dendritic cells (DC) and their interactions with HIV.  He has studied HIV within the context of the critical interaction between dendritic cells and T-cells, using primary cell cultures of human skin, lymphoid and thymic DCs.  Recent work has focussed on HIV latency and HIV persistence and cure. Latent HIV infection has been shown to occur in resting T cells during their interaction with DC or in the presence of exogenous chemokines, providing a useful in vitro model of latency for screening for agents that can control latency. 

  Publications
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  Projects

  • HIV Latency Reversing Agents

    The biggest hurdle in curing HIV infection in an individual is that the virus remains dormant in some populations of cells, hiding from the immune system and the cocktail of antiviral drugs. This is described as HIV latency and poses a major barrier to curing HIV. The Lewin-Cameron Lab’s research focuses on agents that ‘wake up’ dormant HIV hiding in the body and reverse HIV latency. One group of drugs they strongly focus on is histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi).

  • Dendritic cells and immunomodulation in HIV

    Dendritic cell-T cell interactions in different tissues are critical in generating T cell immunity and this interaction is important in controlling productive HIV infection and latency in the T cells.  The Lewin-Cameron Lab are exploring how different types of dendritic cells can control the establishment, reversal and maintenance of HIV latency.  One major interest of this group is the role of immune check points and their blockade in DC-induced HIV latency.

  • HIV Reservoir Virology

    The HIV Reservoir Virology group’s major focus is on unravelling the viral determinants of HIV latency. They use innovative virological techniques to understand how the virus can persist on ART using CD4+ T-cells from HIV-infected individuals on ART. The reservoir virology group also has a major interest in developing assays to better quantify HIV persistence on antiretroviral therapy.

  • HIV and co-infections

    Co-infections with viral or bacterial pathogens cause significant morbidity in patients with HIV. In the case of HIV/HBV co-infection, morbidity and mortality secondary to liver disease is greatly increased compared to those infected with HBV or HIV alone. Mortality remains elevated even after treating both the HIV and HBV virus. The HBV Immunology Lab investigates the mechanism of how HIV can accelerate liver disease in patients co-infected with HBV. They hypothesise that this occurs by combined effects of HIV and HBV on inflammation in the liver. These studies could potentially lead to new treatments for liver disease. In addition they have a long-standing interest in developing novel assays to characterise the immune response to other important HIV co-infections, including cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Cryptococcus.

  Research Groups

  • Lewin/Cameron Group

    The main focus of the Lewin-Cameron laboratory is to understand why HIV infection persists on antiretroviral therapy, to develop new strategies to eliminate latency and to define the biological determinants of immune reconstitution and factors that drive liver disease in HIV-hepatitis B virus co-infection.

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    Lab Team

    

    • Associate Professor Paul Cameron

      Joint Lab head
    • Dr Jasminka Sterjovski

      Research Manager
    • Julia Stout

      Project Manager
    • Dr Jennifer Audsley

      Post-doctoral Research Fellow
    • Dr Jenny Anderson

      Post-doctoral Research Fellow
    • Dr Vanessa Evans

      Post-doctoral Research Fellow
    • Dr Renee van de Sluis

      Post-doctoral Research Fellow
    • Dr Jori Symons

      Post-doctoral Research Fellow
    • Dr Michael Roche

      Post-doctoral Fellow
    • Ajantha Rhodes

      Lab Manager
    • Surekha Tennakoon

      Research Officer
    • Ashanti Dantanarayana

      Research Assistant
    • Simin Rezaei

      PhD student
    • Dr Kasha Singh

      PhD student
    • Talia Mota

      PhD student
    • Dr Michelle Yong

      PhD student
    • Dr Matthew Pitman

      PhD student
    • Youry Kim

      PhD student
    • Zuwena Richardson

      PhD student
    • Ashish Nair

      Casual RA
    • Haoming Liu

      Student
    • Wei Zhao

      Research Fellow
    • Jared Stern

      Honours Student

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