Rafal Kaminski, PhD

Dr. Rafal Kaminski has excelled in utilizing CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to combat HIV-1, demonstrating for the first time its ability to excise the full-length HIV-1 genome from chromosomes in latently infected human myeloid cells and provide resistance to a new infection. He replicated the results in T cells, HIV-1 Tg rats, and mice, mice humanized with HIV-1 patient-derived T cells, and in vivo infected ART-treated HSC-mice. His recent research is focused on: (i) developing strategies to further improve the specificity and delivery of anti-HIV CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing platform and (ii) targeting host dependency factor genes to block HIV replication and virus dissemination in the host.