Douglas Richman
Encyclopedia
Douglas D. Richman is a US medical virologist. Richman has worked primarily in the HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

 field over the past twenty years, with major contributions in the areas of resistance and pathogenicity.

Career

Richman received his MD
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...

 degree from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1970. After holding positions at the U.S. Public Health Service, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health , an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services...

 and Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

, he joined the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 1976, becoming Professor of Pathology and Medicine (1988) as well as Co-Director (1994) and later Director (2000) of the Center for AIDS Research. As of 2007, he additionally holds the Florence Seeley Riford Chair in AIDS Research there.

He has also held positions at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health System
Veterans Health Administration
The Veterans Health Administration is the component of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs led by the Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Health that implements the medical assistance program of the VA through the administration and operation of numerous VA outpatient clinics,...

 since 1976, including Director from 1988 to 2007. As of 2007, he holds the position of staff physician.

Research

Richman's early research was on influenza virus, herpesviruses and hemorrhagic fever viruses
Viral hemorrhagic fever
The viral hemorrhagic fevers are a diverse group of animal and human illnesses that are caused by four distinct families of RNA viruses: the families Arenaviridae, Filoviridae, Bunyaviridae, and Flaviviridae. All types of VHF are characterized by fever and bleeding disorders and all can progress...

, before focusing on HIV in the 1980s. His wide-ranging research in the HIV field has encompassed resistance
Drug resistance
Drug resistance is the reduction in effectiveness of a drug such as an antimicrobial or an antineoplastic in curing a disease or condition. When the drug is not intended to kill or inhibit a pathogen, then the term is equivalent to dosage failure or drug tolerance. More commonly, the term is used...

, viral pathogenicity
Pathogenicity
Pathogenicity is the ability of a pathogen to produce an infectious disease in an organism.It is often used interchangeably with the term "virulence", although virulence is used more specifically to describe the relative degree of damage done by a pathogen, or the degree of pathogenicity caused by...

 and host immune responses. He was one of the group of researchers who first demonstrated HIV drug resistance in 1989, and in 1997, his laboratory was also among the first to demonstrate HIV latency.

As of 2007, his research focuses on the natural history and molecular pathogenesis of acute HIV infection, particularly the immune responses to the virus, and viral evolution to evade the immune system.

Awards, editorships and advisory positions

Awards include the Howard M. Temin Award (1993), Steve Chase Humanitarian Award for Science and Medicine of the Desert AIDS Project (2001) and United States Department of Veterans Affairs
United States Department of Veterans Affairs
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. It is the United States government’s second largest department, after the United States Department of Defense...

 Middleton Award (2002).

Richman is one of the founding editors of the academic journal Antiviral Therapy
Antiviral Therapy
Antiviral Therapy is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by International Medical Press, London, UK. It publishes primary papers and reviews on all aspects of the clinical development of antivirals, including clinical trial results, resistance, viral diagnostics, drug safety,...

and is Editor-in-Chief of Topics in HIV Medicine, as well as having served on the editorial board of 15 journals. He is a co-editor of the textbook Clinical Virology and editor of Antiviral Drug Resistance. He serves on the Vaccine Research Committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group
AIDS Clinical Trials Group
The AIDS Clinical Trials Group is the largest HIV clinical trials organization in the world, playing a major role in setting standards of care for HIV infection and opportunistic diseases related to HIV and AIDS in the United States and the developed world. The ACTG is composed of, and directed...

 and the International AIDS Society
International AIDS Society
The International AIDS Society is an independent association of HIV professionals, with 14,000 members from 190 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. IAS members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the...

panel responsible for publishing international treatment guidelines.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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