Elizabeth Connick, MD

I fell in love with immunology as a first-year medical student at Harvard in a class taught by the Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Baruj Benacerraf. It was the mid-1980s, and the HIV epidemic was emerging in all its perplexing horror, the virus devastating the immune system through unknown means. I had friends who were stigmatized and dying from HIV, which made it personal. When I was a third-year medical student in 1987, Chip Schooley was my ID attending. He was involved in clinical trials to treat HIV as well as laboratory research to understand HIV immunology. His brilliance and passion for patient care and research were inspiring, and that is when I became hooked on ID! I decided then that I would dedicate my career to fighting the HIV epidemic through clinical care and research to unravel how HIV evades and depletes the immune system. I was fortunate that Chip recruited me to perform my ID fellowship at the University of Colorado and then to join the faculty. Although there were many challenges, the path has been fulfilling. I would encourage anyone who wishes to pursue an academic career in ID to focus on what they think is important and find good mentors!

As ID professionals, we all are familiar with the concept of HIV treatment as prevention, or TasP. The science establishing TasP as an effective medical and public health strategy was established by HPTN 052, a randomized clinical trial involving 1,763 serodiscordant couples from nine different countries, which showed a 93% reduction in transmission risk in couples in which the infected partner was assigned to early ART. The implications of this finding were so significant that in 2011, Science highlighted the study as its “Breakthrough of the Year.” Collectively, results from HPTN 052 and several other landmark studies have validated that people living with HIV who have maximally suppressed virus on ART do not sexually transmit HIV to their partners. But surprisingly, this information has not been conveyed to the affected community in a meaningful way that would allow them to share its benefits.

One of the most remarkable research findings over the past 4 months was the success of a tenofovir-based vaginal gel in preventing HIV infection.