Maria Blasi

Journal Article Commun Med (Lond) · May 15, 2025 BACKGROUND: Sequential multivalent immunizations are used to counter diversity in rapidly mutating viruses. Here, we evaluated the effect of HIV-1 immunogen formats on the binding profile of memory B-cells elicited in two independent Rhesus macaque trials. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Breast milk delivery of an engineered dimeric IgA protects neonates against rotavirus.

Journal Article Mucosal Immunol · April 2025 Dimeric IgA (dIgA) is the dominant antibody in many mucosal tissues. It is actively transported onto mucosal surfaces as secretory IgA (sIgA) which plays an integral role in protection against enteric pathogens, particularly in young children. Therapeutic ... Full text Link to item Cite

Longitudinal analysis of viral dynamics in HIV+-to-HIV+ HOPE Act kidney-transplant recipients.

Journal Article J Clin Invest · September 10, 2024 BACKGROUNDThe HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act allows individuals living with HIV to accept organs from donors with HIV. This practice widens the pool of available organs, but also presents important virological issues, including the potential for HIV su ... Full text Link to item Cite

Initiator cell death event induced by SARS-CoV-2 in the human airway epithelium.

Journal Article Sci Immunol · July 12, 2024 Virus-induced cell death is a key contributor to COVID-19 pathology. Cell death induced by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is well studied in myeloid cells but less in its primary host cell type, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 ... Full text Link to item Cite

B cell immunofocusing and repriming in two HIV-1 Env immunization regimens.

Preprint · April 8, 2024 Full text Link to item Cite

Integrase Defective Lentiviral Vector Promoter Impacts Transgene Expression in Target Cells and Magnitude of Vector-Induced Immune Responses.

Journal Article Viruses · November 14, 2023 Integrase defective lentiviral vectors (IDLVs) are a promising vaccine delivery platform given their ability to induce high magnitude and durable antigen-specific immune responses. IDLVs based on the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) are significantly mo ... Full text Link to item Cite

HIV-1 infection of renal epithelial cells: 30 years of evidence from transgenic animal models, human studies and in vitro experiments.

Journal Article Retrovirology · March 16, 2023 Although antiretroviral therapy (ART) has increased life expectancy in people with HIV-1 (PWH), acute and chronic kidney disease remain common in this population and are associated with poor outcomes. A broad spectrum of kidney disorders can be observed in ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dam-Infant Rhesus Macaque Pairs to Dissect Age-Dependent Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Infection.

Journal Article Immunohorizons · December 1, 2022 The global spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its associated coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has led to a pandemic of unprecedented scale. An intriguing feature of the infection is the minimal disease in most children ... Full text Link to item Cite

Establishment, Persistence, and Reactivation of Latent HIV-1 Infection in Renal Epithelial Cells.

Journal Article J Virol · July 27, 2022 HIV-1 persistence in different cell types presents the main obstacle to an HIV-1 cure. We have previously shown that the renal epithelium is a site of HIV-1 infection and that the kidney represents a separate viral compartment from blood. Whether renal cel ... Full text Link to item Cite

The use of viral vectors in vaccine development.

Journal Article NPJ Vaccines · July 4, 2022 Vaccines represent the single most cost-efficient and equitable way to combat and eradicate infectious diseases. While traditional licensed vaccines consist of either inactivated/attenuated versions of the entire pathogen or subunits of it, most novel expe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Maternal immune protection against infectious diseases.

Journal Article Cell Host Microbe · May 11, 2022 The maternal immune system protects developing offspring against pathogens before birth via transplacental transfer and after birth through secreted milk. This transferred maternal immunity influences each generation's susceptibility to infections and resp ... Full text Link to item Cite

Persistent immunogenicity of integrase defective lentiviral vectors delivering membrane-tethered native-like HIV-1 envelope trimers.

Journal Article NPJ Vaccines · April 21, 2022 Integrase Defective Lentiviral Vectors (IDLVs) represent an attractive vaccine platform for delivering HIV-1 antigens, given their ability to induce specific and persistent immune responses in both mice and non-human primates (NHPs). Recent advances in HIV ... Full text Link to item Cite

E-cigarette and food flavoring diacetyl alters airway cell morphology, inflammatory and antiviral response, and susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2.

Journal Article Cell Death Discov · February 15, 2022 Diacetyl (DA) is an α-diketone that is used to flavor microwave popcorn, coffee, and e-cigarettes. Occupational exposure to high levels of DA causes impaired lung function and obstructive airway disease. Additionally, lower levels of DA exposure dampen hos ... Full text Link to item Cite

SARS-CoV-2 Employ BSG/CD147 and ACE2 Receptors to Directly Infect Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Kidney Podocytes.

Journal Article Front Cell Dev Biol · 2022 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has resulted in over 5.9 million deaths worldwide. While cells in the respiratory system are the initial target of SARS-CoV-2, there is mount ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Oral Hsp90 inhibitor SNX-5422 attenuates SARS-CoV-2 replication and dampens inflammation in airway cells.

Journal Article iScience · December 17, 2021 Currently available SARS-CoV-2 therapeutics are targeted toward moderately to severely ill patients and require intravenous infusions, with limited options for exposed or infected patients with no or mild symptoms. Although vaccines have demonstrated prote ... Full text Link to item Cite

BSG/CD147 and ACE2 receptors facilitate SARS-CoV-2 infection of human iPS cell-derived kidney podocytes.

Journal Article bioRxiv · November 17, 2021 BACKGROUND: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. The disease has caused more than 5.1 million deaths ... Full text Link to item Cite

HIV-1 infection of the kidney: mechanisms and implications.

Journal Article AIDS · March 1, 2021 Featured Publication People living with HIV are at higher risk for acute and chronic kidney disease compared with uninfected individuals. Kidney disease in this population is multifactorial, with several contributors including HIV infection of kidney cells, chronic inflammatio ... Full text Link to item Cite

Maternal Antibody Interference Contributes to Reduced Rotavirus Vaccine Efficacy in Developing Countries

Chapter · January 1, 2021 Cite

Immunogenicity, safety, and efficacy of sequential immunizations with an SIV-based IDLV expressing CH505 Envs.

Journal Article NPJ Vaccines · November 18, 2020 Featured Publication A preventative HIV-1 vaccine is an essential intervention needed to halt the HIV-1 pandemic. Neutralizing antibodies protect against HIV-1 infection in animal models, and thus an approach toward a protective HIV-1 vaccine is to induce broadly cross-reactiv ... Full text Link to item Cite

HIV-1 diversity and compartmentalization in urine, semen, and blood.

Journal Article Medicine (Baltimore) · November 13, 2020 Featured Publication HIV-1 persists indefinitely in multiple cellular reservoirs despite antiretroviral therapy. We previously demonstrated HIV-1 compartmentalization in kidney and urine. Here, we further characterized viruses in urine and when available, compared them to thos ... Full text Link to item Cite

Lessons From COVID-19 in Children: Key Hypotheses to Guide Preventative and Therapeutic Strategies.

Journal Article Clin Infect Dis · November 5, 2020 Featured Publication The current pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), reveals a peculiar trend of milder disease and lower case fatality in children compared with adults. Consisten ... Full text Link to item Cite

Maternal antibody interference contributes to reduced rotavirus vaccine efficacy in developing countries.

Journal Article PLoS Pathog · November 2020 Rotavirus (RV) vaccine efficacy is significantly reduced in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared to high-income countries. This review summarizes current research into the mechanisms behind this phenomenon, with a particular focus on the evi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Proliferation of HIV-infected renal epithelial cells following virus acquisition from infected macrophages.

Journal Article AIDS · September 1, 2020 Featured Publication OBJECTIVES: HIV-1 can infect and persist in different organs and tissues, resulting in the generation of multiple viral compartments and reservoirs. Increasing evidence supports the kidney as such a reservoir. Previous work demonstrated that HIV-1 infected ... Full text Link to item Cite

Skeletal Muscle Is an Antigen Reservoir in Integrase-Defective Lentiviral Vector-Induced Long-Term Immunity.

Journal Article Mol Ther Methods Clin Dev · June 12, 2020 We previously developed integrase-defective lentiviral vectors (IDLVs) as an antigen delivery system for inducing strong and prolonged immunity in animal models. Here, we examined the association between persistence of antigen expression and durability of ... Full text Link to item Cite

Shortening HIV vaccine regimens to achieve high coverage.

Journal Article Lancet HIV · June 2020 Featured Publication Full text Link to item Cite

Therapeutic vaccination with IDLV-SIV-Gag results in durable viremia control in chronically SHIV-infected macaques.

Journal Article NPJ Vaccines · May 8, 2020 Despite incredible scientific efforts, there is no cure for HIV infection. While antiretroviral treatment (ART) can help control the virus and prevent transmission, it cannot eradicate HIV from viral reservoirs established before the initiation of therapy. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Detection of Donor's HIV Strain in HIV-Positive Kidney-Transplant Recipient.

Journal Article N Engl J Med · January 9, 2020 Featured Publication Full text Link to item Cite

Immunogenicity, safety and efficacy of sequential immunizations with an SIV-based IDLV expressing CH505 Envs

Journal Article · 2020 Featured Publication A preventative HIV-1 vaccine is an essential intervention needed to halt the HIV-1 pandemic. Neutralizing antibodies protect against HIV-1 infection in animal models, and thus an approach toward a protective HIV-1 vaccine is to induce broadly cross-reactiv ... Full text Cite

Therapeutic vaccination with IDLV-SIV-Gag results in durable viremia control in chronically SHIV-infected macaques.

Journal Article NPJ Vaccines · 2020 Featured Publication Despite incredible scientific efforts, there is no cure for HIV infection. While antiretroviral treatment (ART) can help control the virus and prevent transmission, it cannot eradicate HIV from viral reservoirs established before the initiation of therapy. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Fatty acid transport protein 2 reprograms neutrophils in cancer.

Journal Article Nature · May 2019 Featured Publication Polymorphonuclear myeloid-derived suppressor cells (PMN-MDSCs) are pathologically activated neutrophils that are crucial for the regulation of immune responses in cancer. These cells contribute to the failure of cancer therapies and are associated with poo ... Full text Link to item Cite

IDLV-HIV-1 Env vaccination in non-human primates induces affinity maturation of antigen-specific memory B cells.

Journal Article Commun Biol · 2018 Featured Publication HIV continues to be a major global health issue. In spite of successful prevention interventions and treatment methods, the development of an HIV vaccine remains a major priority for the field and would be the optimal strategy to prevent new infections. We ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Lipid bodies containing oxidatively truncated lipids block antigen cross-presentation by dendritic cells in cancer.

Journal Article Nat Commun · December 14, 2017 Featured Publication Cross-presentation is a critical function of dendritic cells (DCs) required for induction of antitumor immune responses and success of cancer immunotherapy. It is established that tumor-associated DCs are defective in their ability to cross-present antigen ... Full text Link to item Cite

Immunization with an SIV-based IDLV Expressing HIV-1 Env 1086 Clade C Elicits Durable Humoral and Cellular Responses in Rhesus Macaques.

Journal Article Mol Ther · November 2016 Featured Publication The design of an effective HIV-1 vaccine remains a major challenge. Several vaccine strategies based on viral vectors have been evaluated in preclinical and clinical trials, with largely disappointing results. Integrase defective lentiviral vectors (IDLV) ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Identification of HIV-1 genitourinary tract compartmentalization by analyzing the env gene sequences in urine.

Journal Article AIDS · August 24, 2015 Featured Publication OBJECTIVE: HIV-1 persists indefinitely in memory CD4 T cells and other long-lived cellular reservoirs despite antiretroviral therapy. Our group had previously demonstrated that HIV-1 can establish a productive infection in renal epithelial cells and that t ... Full text Link to item Cite

Murine granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor expressed from a bicistronic simian immunodeficiency virus-based integrase-defective lentiviral vector does not enhance T-cell responses in mice.

Journal Article Viral Immunol · December 2014 As a prelude to immunization studies in nonhuman primates, we compared in mice the immunogenicity of a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-based integrase (IN)-defective lentiviral vector (IDLV) encoding the model antigen-enhanced green fluorescence protei ... Full text Link to item Cite

Renal epithelial cells produce and spread HIV-1 via T-cell contact.

Journal Article AIDS · October 23, 2014 Featured Publication OBJECTIVES: Increasing evidence supports the role of the kidney as a reservoir for HIV-1. In-vitro co-cultivation of HIV-infected T cells with renal tubule epithelial (RTE) cells results in virus transfer to the latter, whereas cell-free virus infection is ... Full text Link to item Cite

HBV whole-genome mutation profile in HIV-1/HBV coinfected patients in a long-term follow-up study.

Journal Article Infection · August 2014 PURPOSE: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1)-infected patients frequently harbour hepatitis B and C viruses (HBV and HCV, respectively). Possible modifications of the natural history of hepatitis B may occur. The aim of this study was to characterise HBV ... Full text Link to item Cite

Optimization of mucosal responses after intramuscular immunization with integrase defective lentiviral vector.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2014 Many infectious agents infiltrate the host at the mucosal surfaces and then spread systemically. This implies that an ideal vaccine should induce protective immune responses both at systemic and mucosal sites to counteract invasive mucosal pathogens. We ev ... Full text Link to item Cite

Effects of raltegravir on 2-long terminal repeat circle junctions in HIV type 1 viremic and aviremic patients.

Journal Article AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses · October 2013 Although 2-long terminal repeat (2-LTR) circles are only a fraction of the total viral DNA in infected cells, sequence analysis of 2-LTR circles reveals critical information regarding viral DNA synthesis and the nature of actively replicating virus. It was ... Full text Link to item Cite

Simian immunodeficiency virus-Vpx for improving integrase defective lentiviral vector-based vaccines.

Journal Article Retrovirology · August 22, 2012 BACKGROUND: Integrase defective lentiviral vectors (IDLV) represent a promising delivery system for immunization purposes. Human dendritic cells (DC) are the main cell types mediating the immune response and are readily transduced by IDLV, allowing effecti ... Full text Link to item Cite

Integrase-defective lentiviral-vector-based vaccine: a new vector for induction of T cell immunity.

Journal Article Expert Opin Biol Ther · June 2011 INTRODUCTION: The development of new strategies for the induction of potent and broad immune responses is of high priority in the vaccine field. In this setting, integrase-defective lentiviral vectors (IDLV) represent a new and promising delivery system fo ... Full text Link to item Cite