Speaker
Description
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a blood-borne RNA virus that remains the major cause of liver-related morbidity worldwide. Following acute infection, outcomes vary drastically across individuals: some patients spontaneously clear the virus, while others develop chronic infection progressing to severe liver disease. This variation is known to be driven by the heterogeneities in host immunity, an interplay among innate immunity, antibodies, and T-cell response. This talk aims to characterize and quantify the impact of different immune response mechanisms, providing insights into future vaccine design.
In this project, we develop a phylodynamic framework to study within-host HCV infection in a cohort of injection drug users (IDU). Our approach integrates viral genetic sequences, reconstructed phylogenetic relationships, and longitudinal biomarker measurements within a unified viral dynamics model. This approach enables joint inference on infection dynamics and viral evolution within the host, allowing genetic diversification to be interpreted alongside observed biomarker trajectories.
The primary objective of this work is to estimate key features of viral dynamics, including viral infection dynamics on cells and viral clearance.Eventually, we seek to determine whether the combined analysis of genetic and longitudinal clinical data can identify signatures associated with distinct infection outcomes.
