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Tricia Burdo, Ph.D.

Tricia Burdo, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Rutgers Institute for Translational Medicine and Science

Professor of Medicine, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Rutgers Institute for Translational Medicine and Science
Child Health Institute of New Jersey
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
89 French Street, Suite 4275
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

tricia.burdo@rutgers.edu

Education: PhD, Cell and Molecular Biology, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA
BA, Biology, Saint Anselm College, Manchester, NH

Postdoctoral Fellowship: The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego, CA

Dr. Tricia Burdo, Ph.D. is Professor of Medicine and Associate Director at  RITMS.  Dr. Burdo is member of the International Society for Nuerovirology, a member of the International Society of NeuroImmunolgy as well as a member of the Society for Neuroscience.

Research Focus:

My lab focuses on the role of ongoing chronic immune activation and the role of monocyte/macrophages in HIV-associated peripheral neuropathy (HIV-PN), HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). It is becoming clear that HIV+ patients on effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) who have non-detectable plasma virus, still have persistent immune activation that includes monocytes and macrophages, accelerated immune aging and senescence, and other co-morbidities including an increased incidence of coronary atherosclerosis and is of great interest in the lab.

We use the SIV-infected rhesus macaque model to study the roles of monocyte traffic, macrophage activation and virus in peripheral neuropathy with and without ART. We have shown that traffic of monocytes (as measured by BrdU+ monocytes) is critical for histopathology in dorsal root ganglia (DRG) and correlates to loss of intraepidermal nerve fibers (IENFD).

We have pioneered work on soluble CD163 (sCD163) as a marker of chronic immune activation in SIV and HIV infection. We have showed that monocyte egress out of the bone marrow correlates with sCD163 in plasma and severity of SIV encephalitis (SIVE). sCD163 was elevated in the plasma of both chronic and early HIV+ patients, which decreased significantly with ART. However, sCD163 in chronically infected patients did not come back to levels found in uninfected demonstrating ongoing monocyte/macrophage activation even with suppressive ART.

The mechanisms of HAND persistence in the ART era are not well understood. It is likely that events occurring early in the CNS set the stage for a future neurological disease that emerges during chronic infection with or without effective ART. We have shown that sCD163 is elevated in HIV+ individuals with HAND and suggest that the persistence of HAND is likely mediated by continual immune activation that includes monocytes and macrophages.

More recently we have been working in conjunction with investigators at Mass General Hospital on immune markers of cardiac disease during HIV infection. We have shown that sCD163 correlated with non-calcified vulnerable plaque. In addition, sCD163 also correlated with the number of inflammatory macrophages in the ascending aorta of HIV infected individuals, as shown by FDG-PET imaging. Currently, Dr. Burdo is an Immunologist measuring immune biomarkers in the Randomized Trial to Prevent Vascular Events in HIV (REPRIEVE) clinical trial (http://reprievetrial.org/). Dr. Burdo is also the lead Immunologist on an ancillary study to examine Sex-Specific Mechanisms of Cardiovascular Disease Risk and Risk Reduction, in which we will assess among HIV-infected individuals ages 40-75 sex-based differences in immune activation and statin-induced immunomodulation in relation to clinical cardiovascular disease events (http://followyourheart.reprievetrial.org/). These are current ongoing projects in the lab.

 

Selected Publications:

  1. Cooley SA, Petersen KJ, Tice C, Langford D, Burdo TH, Roman J, Ances BM. Relationships between plasma neurofilament light chain protein, cognition, and brain aging in people with HIV. AIDS. 2024 Jun 1;38(7):955-962. doi: 10.1097/QAD.0000000000003861. Epub 2024 Feb 6. PubMed PMID: 38329137; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11062811.
  2. Wang Q, Clark KM, Tiwari R, Raju N, Tharp GK, Rogers J, Harris RA, Raveendran M, Bosinger SE, Burdo TH, Silvestri G, Shan L. The CARD8 inflammasome dictates HIV/SIV pathogenesis and disease progression. Cell. 2024 Feb 29;187(5):1223-1237.e16. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.048. PubMed PMID: 38428396; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10919936.
  3. Podgorski RM, Robinson JA, Smith MD, Mallick S, Zhao H, Veazey RS, Kolson DL, Bar KJ, Burdo TH. Transmitted/founder SHIV.D replicates in the brain, causes neuropathogenesis, and persists on combination antiretroviral therapy in rhesus macaques. Retrovirology. 2023 Aug 10;20(1):13. doi: 10.1186/s12977-023-00628-5. PubMed PMID: 37563642; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10413509.
  4. Bauer A, Lindemuth E, Marino FE, Krause R, Joy J, Docken SS, Mallick S, McCormick K, Holt C, Georgiev I, Felber B, Keele BF, Veazey R, Davenport MP, Li H, Shaw GM, Bar KJ. Adaptation of a transmitted/founder simian-human immunodeficiency virus for enhanced replication in rhesus macaques. PLoS Pathog. 2023 Jul;19(7):e1011059. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1011059. eCollection 2023 Jul. PubMed PMID: 37399208; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10348547.
  5. Dash PK, Chen C, Kaminski R, Su H, Mancuso P, Sillman B, Zhang C, Liao S, Sravanam S, Liu H, Waight E, Guo L, Mathews S, Sariyer R, Mosley RL, Poluektova LY, Caocci M, Amini S, Gorantla S, Burdo TH, Edagwa B, Gendelman HE, Khalili K. CRISPR editing of CCR5 and HIV-1 facilitates viral elimination in antiretroviral drug-suppressed virus-infected humanized mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 May 9;120(19):e2217887120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2217887120. Epub 2023 May 1. PubMed PMID: 37126704; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10175831.
  6. Dross S, Venkataraman R, Patel S, Huang ML, Bollard CM, Rosati M, Pavlakis GN, Felber BK, Bar KJ, Shaw GM, Jerome KR, Mullins JI, Kiem HP, Fuller DH, Peterson CW. Efficient ex vivo expansion of conserved element vaccine-specific CD8+ T-cells from SHIV-infected, ART-suppressed nonhuman primates. Front Immunol. 2023;14:1188018. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2023.1188018. eCollection 2023. PubMed PMID: 37207227; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10189133.
  7. Li C, Anderson AK, Wang H, Gil S, Kim J, Huang L, Germond A, Baldessari A, Nelson V, Bar KJ, Peterson CW, Bui J, Kiem HP, Lieber A. Stable HIV decoy receptor expression after in vivo HSC transduction in mice and NHPs: Safety and efficacy in protection from SHIV. Mol Ther. 2023 Apr 5;31(4):1188. doi: 10.1016/j.ymthe.2023.02.019. Epub 2023 Mar 6. PubMed PMID: 36882062; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10124067.
  8. Petersen KJ, Lu T, Wisch J, Roman J, Metcalf N, Cooley SA, Babulal GM, Paul R, Sotiras A, Vaida F, Ances BM. Effects of clinical, comorbid, and social determinants of health on brain ageing in people with and without HIV: a retrospective case-control study. Lancet HIV. 2023 Apr;10(4):e244-e253. doi: 10.1016/S2352-3018(22)00373-3. Epub 2023 Feb 7. PubMed PMID: 36764319; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10065928.
  9. Sungur CM, Wang Q, Ozantürk AN, Gao H, Schmitz AJ, Cella M, Yokoyama WM, Shan L. Human NK cells confer protection against HIV-1 infection in humanized mice. J Clin Invest. 2022 Dec 15;132(24). doi: 10.1172/JCI162694. PubMed PMID: 36282589; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC9753998.
  10. Kim JT, Zack JA. A humanized mouse model to study NK cell biology during HIV infection. J Clin Invest. 2022 Dec 15;132(24). doi: 10.1172/JCI165620. PubMed PMID: 36519544; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC9753985.