Leor Weinberger

Leor S. Weinberger, Ph.D. is an American virologist and quantitative biologist who discovered the HIV virus latency circuit and how it is controlled by stochastic fluctuations ('noise') in gene expression[1][2]. He is the William and Ute Bowes Distinguished Professor of Virology, Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Gladstone Institutes at University of California, San Francisco [3]. His TED talk [4] on a novel antiviral approach 20 years in the making has been called a "highlight" [5] of TEDmed.

Leor Weinberger
Born1975
Toronto, Canada
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley (PhD)
Princeton University (Lewis Thomas Fellow)
Known forviral latency programs, Therapeutic Interfering Particles (TIPs)
AwardsPew Scholar, Sloan Fellow, Blavatnik fellow, TED speaker, NIH Director's Pioneer Award, NIH Director's New Innovator Award, NIH Avant-Garde award for HIV research
Scientific career
FieldsVirology, Synthetic Biology
InstitutionsUniversity of California, San Francisco
Gladstone Instiutes

Research

Weinberger's work has been referred to as "part of what some scientists are calling a 'renaissance' in viral therapy" by the San Francisco Chronicle.[6] According to Wired, Weinberger has pioneered research to combat HIV by creating "therapeutic interfering particles" or "TIPs". The "TIPs" would pass from person to person with an HIV infection, and "by out-competing HIV for cellular resources, the TIPs might slow its progression and lower infection rates."[7]

Weinberger's work also discovered viral latency programs in HIV and herpes[8] showing how viruses use stochastic processes including transcripitional noise. His proposed targeting 'noise' as a therapy for HIV and to reprogram cells in general.[9]

Awards and honors

2017 - William and Ute Bowes Distinguished Professor, Director of the Gladstone Center for Cell Circuitry. He is also Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. Weinberger was named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences in 2008[10] and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow in 2011.[11] He was awarded the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2009[12] and the NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2013.[13]

gollark: They might struggle to write *idiomatic* Haskell.
gollark: I sort of know it, or at least can write reasonably working code in it even if I don't have an intuitive grasp of the weird underlying category theory stuff, but it's really annoying to do the sort of things my code usually involves in it. It's great for stuff like compilers and complex algorithms at least.
gollark: Haskell is very useful if you need to comonadize a zygohistomorphic prepromorphism.
gollark: Something about "explore-exploit tradeoffs".
gollark: I have a book called "Algorithms to Live By" which I think mentions something like that.

References
  1. Weinberger, Leor (July 29, 2005). "Stochastic Gene Expression in a Lentiviral Positive- Feedback Loop: HIV-1 Tat Fluctuations Drive Phenotypic Diversity". Cell. 122 (2): 169–82. arXiv:q-bio/0608002. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2005.06.006. PMID 16051143.
  2. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, July 29, 2005. http://www.hhmi.org/news/random-gene-expression-may-drive-hiv-hiding
  3. Gladstone Institute, April 2015, http://gladstoneinstitutes.org/scientist/weinberger
  4. https://www.tedmed.com/speakers/show?id=772395
  5. https://www.mmm-online.com/home/opinion/in-the-time-of-covid-19-tedmed-still-thrills/
  6. Erin Allday, January 23rd, 2013. "Viruses engineered to attack themselves", San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Viruses-engineered-to-attack-themselves-4233236.php
  7. Dave Mosher, March 1st, 2011. "Piggyback Virus Could Cure HIV Pandemic", Wired. https://www.wired.com/2011/03/virus-therapy-hiv/
  8. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/herpesviruses-hedge-their-bets-to-optimize-survival-301088707.html
  9. Tan and Elledge Genome Medicine 2014, 6:55. http://genomemedicine.com/content/6/1/55
  10. Pew Charitable Trusts, April 2015. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-02-20.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  11. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, April 2015. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-04-11. Retrieved 2014-03-27.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  12. National Institute of Health, April 2015. http://commonfund.nih.gov/arra/newinnovator
  13. National Institute of Health, April 2015. http://commonfund.nih.gov/pioneer/Recipients13
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