{"id":5992,"date":"2024-05-28T11:40:04","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T15:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/virol-immunol-microbio\/?post_type=profile&#038;p=5992"},"modified":"2025-05-30T14:32:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T18:32:21","slug":"hisashi-akiyama-ph-d","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/virol-immunol-microbio\/profile\/hisashi-akiyama-ph-d\/","title":{"rendered":"Hisashi Akiyama, Ph.D."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/virol-immunol-microbio\/files\/2017\/02\/Akiyama.gif\"><\/a><strong>Assistant Professor of Virology, Immunology &amp; Microbiology<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>See\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/profiles.bu.edu\/Hisashi.Akiyama\">BU Profile<\/a><span>\u00a0<\/span>for additional information and publications<\/p>\n<h3>Research Interest<\/h3>\n<p>My research goal is to understand pathogenesis of HIV. In particular, I am interested in the role of myeloid cells in establishment and dissemination of HIV infection and mechanisms of virus evasion from innate and adaptive host immune responses.<\/p>\n<p>Cells of myeloid lineage such as monocytes, dendritic cells (DCs) and macrophages in addition to CD4+ T cells, are susceptible to HIV infection. Myeloid cells have been shown to play a critical role in HIV acquisition at mucosal surfaces and replication in tissues such as central nervous system. Moreover, tissue-resident macrophages can be a major source of HIV production at the late stages of viral infection. To fully understand HIV pathogenesis, it is crucial to elucidate the roles of myeloid cells in HIV infection.<\/p>\n<p>HIV-1 has exploited DCs as a vehicle to infect T cells via a unique mechanism called trans-infection. Our previous work has identified CD169\/Siglec1 as the receptor on DCs that binds to virion-incorporated lipids to initiate trans-infection. CD169 not only enhances HIV-1 replication by trans-infecting T cells, but also contributes to immune evasion. Upon binding to HIV-1 particles, CD169 traffics HIV-1 virions into a sac-like plasma membrane-associated structure, which serves as a sanctuary for HIV-1 against neutralizing antibodies. Ongoing projects are focused on a role of CD169\u2013HIV-1 interaction in attenuating host countermeasures against HIV-1 infection including humoral immunity and type I interferon responses.<\/p>\n<p>Myeloid cells are sentinel cells and elicit robust immune responses upon sensing of invading pathogens. Since antigen persists chronically in HIV-1 infection, continuous activation of\/by myeloid cells may play a key role in chronic immune activation, a hallmark of HIV-1 infection. In fact, it has been shown that infection of macrophages with HIV-1 induces production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and interferon stimulated genes (ISGs) expression. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the HIV-1-induced activation of macrophages still remain unclear. Current studies are focused on understanding the viral and host factors involved in macrophage activation and its consequences in HIV-1 pathogenesis.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20397,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/virol-immunol-microbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/5992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/virol-immunol-microbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/virol-immunol-microbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/virol-immunol-microbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20397"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/virol-immunol-microbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/5992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7426,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/virol-immunol-microbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/5992\/revisions\/7426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/virol-immunol-microbio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}