Dr. Nicolas Paul Sluis-Cremer, PhD

Dr. Sluis-Cremer's laboratory uses a multi-disciplinary approach that includes biophysics, biochemistry, virology, and analysis of clinical samples to gain insight into the mechanisms of action of antiretroviral drugs; antiviral and antimicrobial drug resistance; and understanding how HIV-1 persists in infected individuals despite potent antiretroviral therapy. His lab uses state-of-the-art biophysical methods, including transient kinetic and single-molecule approaches, to define how small molecules affect retroviral enzyme function, the intramolecular protein conformational dynamics, and the intermolecular enzyme-substrate interactions. Dr. Sluis-Cremer's HIV-1 resistance research focuses on identifying drug resistance mutations that are selected in infected-individuals failing therapy, defining the mechanisms by which these mutations decrease drug susceptibility, and predicting how acquired or transmitted drug resistance mutations impact treatment options. In regard to HIV-1 persistence, the lab focuses on characterizing the latent pool of HIV-1 infection that resides in resting CD4+ T cells, in particular the naive and central memory subsets, using novel primary cell models of HIV-1 latency and by studying purified subsets of the resting CD4+ T cell population from HIV-infected individuals on suppressive antiretroviral therapy.