Peter Hunt, MD

Biography

Peter Hunt is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Experimental Medicine (DEM) at the University of California San Francisco. He also serves as Associate Chief for Research for the ZSFG-UCSF Department of Medicine, Co-Director of the UCSF-GIVI Center for AIDS Research (for basic and translational science), and as a member of the Leadership Committee of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute. He also recently completed terms as Interim Chief of the DEM and Chair of the ACTG Inflammation and End Organ Disease Transformative Science Group. His primary research focus is on the inflammatory consequences of HIV infection. His clinic-based translational research program seeks to understand the determinants of persistent immune activation both in the presence and the absence of antiretroviral therapy, and to assess the impact of immune activation on clinical outcomes. He collaborates extensively with a multi-disciplinary team of investigators to assess the impact of persistent immune activation despite viral suppression on mortality and chronic diseases associated with aging (i.e., cardiovascular disease) and conducts clinical trials of novel immune-based interventions designed to decrease immune activation. Dr. Hunt has also led a translational research program in Mbarara, Uganda, focused on the determinants of immune recovery during suppressive antiretroviral therapy in that setting. He also helped develop a large mucosal immunology program at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital focused on the impact of HIV on gut-associated lymphoid tissue and the determinants of microbial translocation in HIV infection. In 2016, he started a laboratory in the DEM, focused on the immunologic consequences of asymptomatic CMV replication during treated HIV infection as well as the adaptive immune defects that persist in this setting in an effort to develop targets for interventions to reduce morbidity and mortality.