Professor / University of Montreal
CHUM Research Center (CRCHUM) 900 St-Denis Street, Viger Tower, R09-456 Montreal, H2X 0A9 Quebec, Canada
Daniel Kaufmann focuses on the role of T cells to combat or prevent HIV infection. His areas of research are the molecular basis of T cell impairment in HIV infection, the understanding of effective CD4 T cell help in anti-HIV immunity and the links between differentiation and regulation of CD4 T cells and their role as viral reservoirs.
Together with his team, Dr. Kaufmann researches mechanisms that control the functional plasticity of CD4 T cells in HIV infection and regulate the impairment of Thelper responses, with the ultimate goal of facilitating development of therapeutic strategies to improve immune function. They have made major contributions to the understanding of T cell exhaustion in HIV infection, in particular on the roles played by the PD-1, CTLA-4 and IL-10.
In addition to that, Dr. Kaufmann’s team has delineated differences in mechanisms of immune impairment between CD4 and CD8 T cells, defined the genome-wide transcriptional landscape of HIV-specific CD4 T cells at different stages of infection and demonstrated that combination bNABb therapy is associated with augmented virus-specific T cell immunity.
Kaufmann laboratory has developed a wide array of techniques, including innovative approaches based on flow cytometric RNA fluorescent in situ hybridization (RNA-FISH) assays to characterize gene expression at the single-cell level — these efforts have enabled the definition of viral reservoirs in primary samples from humans and non-human primates.