Diversity in Life Sciences

Throughout the years, Dr. Almodovar has investigated Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and its involvement in pulmonary vascular diseases like Pulmonary Hypertension. Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) is a long-term complication of HIV infection and is a cause of mortality unrelated to AIDS. What in HIV causes or contributes to PH was –and still remains- largely unknown. As a postdoctoral fellow in Colorado, Dr. Almodovar contributed her experience in molecular virology and bioinformatics to uncover specific HIV Nef polymorphisms associated with the pulmonary hypertensive phenotype in HIV-infected individuals. In addition, her work helped to confirm the utility of SHIVnef-infected macaques as suitable models of HIV-associated pulmonary vascular remodeling, as the pathogenetic changes they observed are concordant with features of several forms of PH including idiopathic, familial, scleroderma-induced, and HIV-associated PH. Her research group then moved on to now investigate the role of CXCR4-utilizing HIV (X4 viruses) in pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary vascular disease, as well as using humanized mice as the next step to continue mechanistic studies here at TTUHSC.