Perspectives
Profile Sharon Lewin: guiding us towards a cure for HIV Sharon Lewin is one of those rare people who seems to be doing it all, and doing so very well. Lewin is the Co-Chair of the 20th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2014), to be held in Melbourne, on July 20–25, 2014, with International AIDS Society (IAS) President Françoise Barré-Sinoussi. Lewin is also the Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Alfred Hospital and Monash University in Melbourne. Later this year, she will become the inaugural Director of the University of Melbourne’s new Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. “Sharon reminds me of the old legends of people in medicine who can do it all. She is the complete package, an outstanding researcher, clinician, teacher, and administrator”, says her long-term collaborator Steven Deeks at the University California, San Francisco. Unperturbed by being local chair of the largest scientific conference in the history of Australia, Lewin is committed to the research field for which she has become best known: a cure for HIV. “Sharon is a key player in the search for a cure, both in the basic biology of HIV latency and translation into clinical trials”, says Julian Elliott, Head of Clinical Research at Monash University’s Department of Infectious Diseases. So how did the daughter of Jewish eastern European immigrants to Melbourne after World War 2 become a top researcher on an issue that only a few years ago was not a global priority? “I originally wanted to become an engineer or an astronaut, but submitted to family expectations and did medicine at Monash University”, she explains. A year in Kenya working in a mission hospital and infectious diseases training followed. “HIV medicine was a natural fit because of the interesting clinical medicine, the social issues of caring for young but marginalised populations, and the rapidly changing science”, she says. After completing a PhD at Melbourne’s Burnet Institute in the mid-1990s, Lewin’s supervisors Suzanne Crowe and John Mills introduced her to David Ho at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York. Lewin recalls how “the centre was at its peak of scientific discovery. Ho had just been lauded for his work on new potent antiretrovirals. The mathematical model he and mathematician Alan Perelson developed initially predicted that only 3 years of antiretrovirals could cure HIV. But they were proved to be wrong with the discovery of long-lived latently infected cells.” So Lewin moved to the centre, with her husband and two young sons, and began postdoctoral research on HIV latency in 1997. Her passion for this research was cemented from that moment on. “Many of the big remaining scientific questions are the same ones we debated then. How to measure very low levels of virus on therapy, whether the virus is still replicating, how long it takes to rebound after stopping therapy, and the factors that determine that.” www.thelancet.com Vol 384 July 19, 2014
In 1999, Lewin returned to Melbourne to continue one of the most important working relationships in her career—a 20-year collaboration with Paul Cameron, a clinical and basic immunologist with whom Lewin co-heads the Alfred Hospital laboratory. Together they have pioneered novel laboratory models of HIV latency that mimic patients’ cells, which, Lewin says, “have been critical in identifying new approaches to eliminate latently infected cells. I love talking through new ideas with Paul. His knowledge of science is encyclopaedic.” She went on to become head of the clinical department at the Alfred Hospital in 2003, which she describes as “an environment very supportive of clinician scientists”. A sabbatical in 2008 at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris followed, where she was encouraged to move her laboratory findings on how to activate latent HIV into clinical trials. 2 years later, Lewin was invited to give the opening plenary at the 2010 IAS meeting in Vienna. “The organisers took a risk, firstly, because I was relatively unknown, and, secondly, because I was asked to give a scientific HIV cure talk to a hugely diverse audience.” Deeks recalls how her address “galvanised the HIV and general community towards a cure”. It was at the conference that Lewin met Barré-Sinoussi, whom Lewin describes as “passionate about a cure, global health, and women in science”. Barré-Sinoussi also appreciates Lewin’s outlook. “I admire her way of thinking, but above all as a humanist—really listening to what people living with HIV are saying and then translating this to what can be the science we develop in order to respond to their needs.” Together with Deeks, the three played a prominent part in the development of the IAS global scientific strategy for a cure for HIV launched in 2012. This strategy will be a key focus at AIDS 2014, but as Lewin notes, “a functional cure (suppression of virus) could be in sight, particularly in young babies treated early, but complete elimination of the virus is unlikely in the near future”. Barré-Sinoussi points to some of the challenges ahead: “the virus remains in a latent form in long-lived cells present in many parts of the body, the size of the reservoir is larger than we thought, and we still do not fully understand the mechanism of latency”. To advance research Lewin believes that “large collaborative research is the way forward”. And, as Lewin notes, “one of the reasons progress in HIV has been so rapid, is because of the meaningful engagement of the affected community. Community needs to be part of all aspects of public health policy, clinical care, and research—the partnership approach so successful in the HIV response, will hopefully shape the way we tackle many other diseases in the future.”
See Comment page 209 For AIDS 2014 see http:// www.aids2014.org/
Selina Lo 223
Profile Sharon Lewin: guiding us towards a cure for HIV Sharon Lewin is one of those rare people who seems to be doing it all, and doing so very well. Lewin is the Co-Chair of the 20th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2014), to be held in Melbourne, on July 20–25, 2014, with International AIDS Society (IAS) President Françoise Barré-Sinoussi. Lewin is also the Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Alfred Hospital and Monash University in Melbourne. Later this year, she will become the inaugural Director of the University of Melbourne’s new Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. “Sharon reminds me of the old legends of people in medicine who can do it all. She is the complete package, an outstanding researcher, clinician, teacher, and administrator”, says her long-term collaborator Steven Deeks at the University California, San Francisco. Unperturbed by being local chair of the largest scientific conference in the history of Australia, Lewin is committed to the research field for which she has become best known: a cure for HIV. “Sharon is a key player in the search for a cure, both in the basic biology of HIV latency and translation into clinical trials”, says Julian Elliott, Head of Clinical Research at Monash University’s Department of Infectious Diseases. So how did the daughter of Jewish eastern European immigrants to Melbourne after World War 2 become a top researcher on an issue that only a few years ago was not a global priority? “I originally wanted to become an engineer or an astronaut, but submitted to family expectations and did medicine at Monash University”, she explains. A year in Kenya working in a mission hospital and infectious diseases training followed. “HIV medicine was a natural fit because of the interesting clinical medicine, the social issues of caring for young but marginalised populations, and the rapidly changing science”, she says. After completing a PhD at Melbourne’s Burnet Institute in the mid-1990s, Lewin’s supervisors Suzanne Crowe and John Mills introduced her to David Ho at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York. Lewin recalls how “the centre was at its peak of scientific discovery. Ho had just been lauded for his work on new potent antiretrovirals. The mathematical model he and mathematician Alan Perelson developed initially predicted that only 3 years of antiretrovirals could cure HIV. But they were proved to be wrong with the discovery of long-lived latently infected cells.” So Lewin moved to the centre, with her husband and two young sons, and began postdoctoral research on HIV latency in 1997. Her passion for this research was cemented from that moment on. “Many of the big remaining scientific questions are the same ones we debated then. How to measure very low levels of virus on therapy, whether the virus is still replicating, how long it takes to rebound after stopping therapy, and the factors that determine that.” www.thelancet.com Vol 384 July 19, 2014
In 1999, Lewin returned to Melbourne to continue one of the most important working relationships in her career—a 20-year collaboration with Paul Cameron, a clinical and basic immunologist with whom Lewin co-heads the Alfred Hospital laboratory. Together they have pioneered novel laboratory models of HIV latency that mimic patients’ cells, which, Lewin says, “have been critical in identifying new approaches to eliminate latently infected cells. I love talking through new ideas with Paul. His knowledge of science is encyclopaedic.” She went on to become head of the clinical department at the Alfred Hospital in 2003, which she describes as “an environment very supportive of clinician scientists”. A sabbatical in 2008 at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris followed, where she was encouraged to move her laboratory findings on how to activate latent HIV into clinical trials. 2 years later, Lewin was invited to give the opening plenary at the 2010 IAS meeting in Vienna. “The organisers took a risk, firstly, because I was relatively unknown, and, secondly, because I was asked to give a scientific HIV cure talk to a hugely diverse audience.” Deeks recalls how her address “galvanised the HIV and general community towards a cure”. It was at the conference that Lewin met Barré-Sinoussi, whom Lewin describes as “passionate about a cure, global health, and women in science”. Barré-Sinoussi also appreciates Lewin’s outlook. “I admire her way of thinking, but above all as a humanist—really listening to what people living with HIV are saying and then translating this to what can be the science we develop in order to respond to their needs.” Together with Deeks, the three played a prominent part in the development of the IAS global scientific strategy for a cure for HIV launched in 2012. This strategy will be a key focus at AIDS 2014, but as Lewin notes, “a functional cure (suppression of virus) could be in sight, particularly in young babies treated early, but complete elimination of the virus is unlikely in the near future”. Barré-Sinoussi points to some of the challenges ahead: “the virus remains in a latent form in long-lived cells present in many parts of the body, the size of the reservoir is larger than we thought, and we still do not fully understand the mechanism of latency”. To advance research Lewin believes that “large collaborative research is the way forward”. And, as Lewin notes, “one of the reasons progress in HIV has been so rapid, is because of the meaningful engagement of the affected community. Community needs to be part of all aspects of public health policy, clinical care, and research—the partnership approach so successful in the HIV response, will hopefully shape the way we tackle many other diseases in the future.”
See Comment page 209 For AIDS 2014 see http:// www.aids2014.org/
Selina Lo 223
