General Internal Medicine, Immunology and Infectious Diseases

Research Activities

The department employs researchers in the broader field of infectious diseases and clinical immunology, ranging from public health, health systems, operational research to fundamental research. The topics include HIV, antibiotic stewardship, fever and inflammation of unknown origin, tuberculosis, parasitic diseases and immunodeficiencies. 

Research Staff

• Prof. dr. Steven Callens: infectious diseases, tropical medicine, fever of unknown origin
• Prof. dr. Linos Vandekerckhove: cellular interactions and extracellular matrix,  transcription and translation, virology, clinical immunology
• Prof. dr. Marie-Angélique De Scheerder: infectious diseases, immunology, inflammation

HIV Cure Research Centre

The HIV Cure Research Centre (HCRC) conducts fundamental research into the cure of HIV and viral persistence. 

Its goal is to contribute to the development of new cure strategies. Although the group was only founded in 2010, the HCRC currently consists at this moment of 25 people, and has published key publications in the field of HIV-1 reservoirs in journals such as eLife, PLOS Pathogens, Lancet HIV, Cell Host & Microbe and more. We frequently engage in international collaborations, which resulted in close connections with leading scientists in the HIV-1 field. 

Our group managed to establish a platform to collect in-depth tissue samples from HIV-positive patients. More specific by means of leucapheresis, lymph node excision, gut biopsies, lumbar puncture, etc. in collaboration with a patient ‘clinical research guiding group’. In addition, our group has done pioneering work in the field of HIV quantification based on ddPCR platforms and currently we are working on an in-depth qualitative characterization of the viral reservoir. Approximately 3 years ago, we initiated HIV integration site and HIV full-length sequencing in our lab. All this technology is fully operational today.