Associate Professor of Clinical Investigation
Rockefeller University
Marina Caskey is an Associate Professor of Clinical Investigation at The Rockefeller University. Her research focuses on the development and clinical evaluation of novel immunotherapeutic strategies against infectious diseases, with a special emphasis on HIV. Dr. Caskey graduated from medical school at the Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil, in 1998. She then completed an internal medicine residency at Saint Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital, in New York, followed by fellowship training in infectious diseases at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Despite the success of combination antiretroviral therapy in suppressing viral replication and preventing disease progression, HIV incidence remains high, and current treatment modalities do not eradicate the infection. A new generation of highly potent, broadly neutralizing antibodies may represent a novel strategy to combat HIV infection, potentially providing long-term control of infection, prevention of new infections, and guidance for vaccine development. Dr. Caskey has led a series of early-phase clinical studies to evaluate the safety and efficacy of broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies. These studies have revitalized this area of HIV research, which had been abandoned after first-generation antibodies failed to show significant effects in humans. Broadly neutralizing antibodies are now considered one of the most promising strategies to achieve HIV remission, as well as potential alternatives to antiretrovirals for both therapy and prevention. These studies have shaped this new area of research and several groups in the US and abroad are now studying the antiviral and immune modifying effects of these molecules in combination with other strategies.
She is also an attending physician in infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine and a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.
Disclosure: Nothing to disclose
Thursday, October 22, 2020
3:45pm – 5:00pm EDT