Dr. Florencia Pereyra is a physician scientist at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard and the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is also the Associate Director of the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research Clinical Core. She completed her medical training at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, her Internal Medicine training at Albert Einstein Medical Center and her Infectious Diseases training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital combined fellowship program. She joined the laboratory of Bruce Walker during her postdoctoral research training.

Dr.Pereyra's research interest is in host genetic and immunologic correlates of HIV control. As a co-investigator within the Walker Vaccine Discovery Consortium she led the establishment of what is now the largest existing cohort and biological sample repository of spontaneous HIV controllers in the world (The International HIV Controllers Study). This cohort of well pedigreed individuals is being used by the group to identify innate and adaptive immune, viral and host genetic correlates of HIV control and their implications for immunogen design.

She has worked for the past 4 years in a genome wide association study that included 1000 HIV controllers and 2500 chronic progressors, in this study substantial progress was made in identifying new genetic variants and explaining the classical HLA associations with durable control of HIV. In addition her work in assessing the differential contribution of T cell responses in HIV controllers has resulted in the identification of epitope specific CD8+ T cell responses that are associated with spontaneous viral control and can be used to inform immunogen design. Dr. Pereyra continues to provide direct patient care to a large population of HIV infected individuals at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Additional info:
		Collaboration, Philanthropy, and Volunteerism Speed Research A report in Science entitled "The major genetic determinants of HIV-1 control affect HLA class I peptide presentation", is the culmination of the efforts of over 300 collaborators on 6 continents and is a testament to the power of collaboration, philanthropy and volunteerism in scientific research. read more
		Video: Dr. Pereyra's presentation at the MGH Fund Spring Lecture On May 25, 2011, nearly 150 of our MGH Fund donors gathered at the annual Spring Lecture to hear directly from a panel of doctors who are making incredible breakthroughs today that will shape the future of health care tomorrow. watch