Dr. David M. Knipe                       
Higgins Professor of Microbiology                         
and Molecular Genetics                             
Harvard Medical School
200 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Tel. 617-432-1934   
Fax 617-432-0223  
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TDr. David Knipe received his PhD degree in cell biology from MIT in 1976 for his thesis research on vesicular stomatitis virus assembly with Drs. David Baltimore and Harvey Lodish.  He did postdoctoral work on herpesvirus molecular genetics with Dr. Bernard Roizman at the University of Chicago from 1976-9.  He became an assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School in 1979,  associate professor in 1984, and professor in 1990.  In 1996 he became the Higgins Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.  He was assistant chair of the Virology Program at Harvard from 1982-1985 and chair of the Virology Program from 1985-1991, and from 1991-1994 he was director of the Tridepartment Graduate Program at HMS.  He serves as a member of the Harvard Medical School Division of AIDS executive committee, an editor for the journal Virology, and co-chief editor of Fields Virology, the leading virology reference book.  He has been the program director for the Mechanisms of Viral Infection Training program since 1986.  He has received an American Cancer Society Faculty Research Award, an NIH MERIT Award, and he served as chair of the NIH Virology Study Section from 1998-2000.

Dr. Knipe’s laboratory investigates the molecular and cellular biology of herpes simplex virus infection during productive and latent infection and the host immune responses to viral infection.  His work has defined the nuclear remodeling events that take place during productive infection that allow the virus to take over the host cell nucleus for replication.  This research is now defining the mechanisms by which HSV blocks the innate immunity signaling pathways through modifications of the host cell.  His research has developed a replication-defective HSV-2 mutant virus as a candidate genital herpes vaccine, and this vaccine candidate is now being produced for phase I clinical trials.  HSV recombinant viruses expressing simian immunodeficiency virus and human immunodeficiency virus proteins have been constructed as candidate AIDS vaccine vectors.  These vaccine vectors expressing SIV proteins have been used to immunize macaques, and partial protection against pathogenic SIV challenge has been observed.  These promising results have led to the development of these AIDS vaccine vectors for clinical trials.