Constantinos Petrovas is a Staff Scientist at the Immunology Laboratory of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his work has revealed an alternative strategy of finding cells with the HIV Virus that can lead to novel therapeutic interventions promoting an effective, long-lasting cellular immune response.

G. Petrovas received his medical degree from the School of Medicine at the National University of Athens, where he also completed his Ph.D. in immunology studying anti-phospholipid antibodies in autoimmunity and HIV.

He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Biochemistry of the Boston University and at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology of the Drexel University. His work was focused on the mechanisms mediating the “exhaustion” of SIV/HIV- specific CD8 T cells and he was the first to describe PD-1 as a mediator of SIV/HIV-specific CD8 T cell survival.

In 2005, he joined as a Staff Scientist the Immunology Laboratory of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Maryland of the United States. His research, at present, is focused on the dynamics of CD4 and CD8 T cells at tissue level and particularly in the lymph node follicles in HIV and SIV infection. His work was the first to describe the phenotype, localization, molecular profile and dynamics of Tfh CD4 T cells in acute and chronic SIV infection.

“Our findings show that with proper immune interventions, we could trigger and orient the killer-cells against HIV-infected cells, contributing to effectively eliminating the virus”, he said in an interview.

Constantinos Petrovas has been serving as ad hoc reviewer for several scientific journals, such as Journal of Experimental Medicine, Blood, Journal of Immunology, Plos Pathogen and Journal of Virology.