Sulggi Lee, MD, PhD

Biography

Career Overview

Dr. Lee's career goals are to better understand the association between host genetics and the host immune response to HIV disease using novel genetic and immunologic translational research methods. Specifically, she is interested in 1) understanding the role of host genetics in determining important immunologic markers in HIV disease, e.g., measures of indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) expression in activated monocytes in chronic HIV; and 2) determining the molecular mechanisms by which the innate immune system responds to HIV, e.g., by analyzing gene expression array data in relation to flow cytometry and metabolomics data among specific HIV-infected populations: HIV elite controllers, HIV-suppressed responders, ARV non-responders.

Spotlight: 2018 CFAR Excellence Award Recipient

After graduating from Stanford University, Dr. Lee went on to receive an MD/PhD at the University of Southern California. She has lived in the Bay Area since the third grade though she was born in Naperville, IL, and spent a few years in Sandy, UT. She returned to Stanford for her internal medicine training, followed by an Infectious Disease fellowship at UCSF.

Her impressive training has launched a quickly accelerating career. Her most recent findings set the stage for her next steps, identifying therapeutic approaches to HIV eradication that would combine practical clinical approaches (early HIV treatment) with novel therapeutic target discovery (e.g., host-HIV genetic omics approaches) to potentially apply towards future HIV eradication strategies.

Lee is now working to merge the two studies presented at this conference: 1) a phase IV trial providing immediate antiretroviral therapy to new, acute HIV-infected individuals and following them over time; and 2) a study that will determine whether timing of ART initiation influences where and how frequently HIV integrates into the host genome, potentially influence HIV latency.

When asked how she would define her ultimate achievement in the field of HIV, Lee says contributing to novel and widespread treatments that improve morbidity/mortality in a large number of HIV-infected individuals, is her long-term goal. And contributing, she adds of course, “to an HIV cure.”