Name Leor Weinberger | ||
Engineering viruses leor weinberger gladstone institutes 2016 fall symposium
Leor S. Weinberger, Ph.D. is an American virologist and quantitative biologist whose research opened a new area of inquiry into the use of HIV as a model system to study stochastic fluctuations ('noise') in gene expression. He is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco and an investigator at the Gladstone Institutes.
Contents
- Engineering viruses leor weinberger gladstone institutes 2016 fall symposium
- Research
- Awards and honors
- References
Research
Weinberger's work has been referred to as "part of what some scientists are calling a 'renaissance' in viral therapy" by the San Francisco Chronicle. According to Wired, Weinberger has pioneered research to combat HIV by creating "therapeutic interfering particles" or "TIPs". The "TIPs" would pass from person to person with an HIV infection, and "by out-competing HIV for cellular resources, the TIPs might slow its progression and lower infection rates."
Weinberger's work has also proposed targeting 'noise' as a therapy for HIV and to reprogram cells in general.
Awards and honors
Weinberger was named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences in 2008 and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow in 2011. He was awarded the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2009 and the NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2013.