Caroline Pereira Bittencourt Passaes

Dr. Caroline Passaes received her Master’s degree in Parasite Biology in 2007 from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil, the largest institution for research and development in biomedical sciences in South America. Since 2005, she has been working on HIV research. During her MSc, she performed studies on the molecular epidemiology of HIV in Brazil. In 2012, she received her PhD in Parasite Biology from the same institution. During her PhD, she investigated the HIV integrase and if the integration process could be impaired in patients with different clinical courses of HIV infection, with focus on individuals that naturally control HIV infection. During this time, she had the opportunity to join the group headed by Dr Mario Stevenson at the University of Miami, from June to October 2011, where she worked on HIV reservoirs and gene expression of cellular co-factors which are part of the integration process in a cohort of HIV controllers. In 2012, she was a visiting researcher at Oswaldo Cruz Institute to develop a project on viral proteins and host restrictions factors in HIV controllers patients. From November 2012 to November 2015 she worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Institut Pasteur and at the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), to develop a project focused on the analyses of early steps leading to long term control of SIV infection. She is currently developing studies of immunoregulation in non-human primate models of natural (SIV controllers) and post-treatment controllers (pVISCONTI).