As if the Way One Died Mattered
The Last Gift: Finding a Cure for HIV
Davey Smith
Assistant Vice Chancellor - Clinical and Translational Research
Professor - Department of Medicine
Co-Director - San Diego Center for AIDS Research
About the Lecture
Here’s the problem: if we only look at blood, we miss where HIV lives. We have to go deeper.
People on modern treatment for HIV can feel well, but small pockets of the virus still hide deep in the body. Regular autopsies happen too late to study these hiding places. An autopsy done within hours after death closes that gap and lets us see real tissues while they are still fresh. People join because they want their lives to help others, and the study is built with clear consent and community oversight.
In this talk, I will show how our Last Gift program follows people with HIV closely near the end of life and then studies many organs right after death. We find that the virus hides in different places for different people, including the gut, the lymph nodes, the brain and spinal cord, liver, kidneys, etc. We can also tell the difference between cells that hold working copies of the virus and cells that do not.
What comes next reaches beyond HIV. The same fast, respectful peri-mortem research model can open new windows on cancer, brain and nerve diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, heart and lung disease, etc. We can learn why some treatments fail, and which targets are real in living tissue. With strong consent, clear community oversight, and partnerships, the Last Gift model can grow into a shared tissue and data resource for many fields. The aim is simple: bring the science to the bedside and the bedside to the lab, so that the hardest moments in life and medicine lead to answers for many diseases, not just one.
Selected Reading & Media References
https://lastgift.ucsd.edu/
https://www.science.org/content/article/last-gift-how-bodies-donated-research-may-help-find-cure-hiv
About the Speaker
Davey M. Smith is Assistant Vice Chancellor of Clinical and Translational Research at the University of California – San Diego (UCSD), where he also is Chair of Faculty in the Department of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health and Professor of Medicine. He is also Co-Director of the San Diego Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and holds the Florence Seeley Riford Chair in AIDS Research.
Davey’s research integrates laboratory science with clinical application. He uses molecular and immunologic techniques to answer clinically relevant questions and translates patient observations into productive new directions of laboratory research. His primary focus is on HIV transmission and reservoir dynamics: understanding how the HIV virus spreads and persists within the body, and discovering new ways to interrupt those processes. He is a pioneer in viral phylogenetics and characterizing the drivers of superinfection.
In response to the Covid pandemic, Davey refocused his research and engaged in the international effort to find safe and effective treatments, including being the international protocol co-chair for the ACTIV-2 treatment study (part of the US government’s response to COVID-19). He also spearheaded national collaborations among the 17 NIH-funded Centers for AIDS Research (CFARs), pooling resources and expertise from HIV research to accelerate COVID-19 understanding and therapy.
Davey is an author on more than 400 scientific publications, including seminal works on HIV transmission, viral reservoirs, and novel antiviral therapeutics. He was recognized by Clarivate as one of the top 1% of researchers in the world by scientific citations.
Among other honors and awards, Davey was named HIV Researcher of the Year by the HIV Medical Association, is a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has received multiple NIH awards for innovation in translational virology, including recognition for his leadership in HIV prevention and COVID-19 therapeutic trials.
Davey earned a BS in Biology at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga an MD from East Tennessee State University College of Medicine, and an MAS in Clinical Research at UC-San Diego
Social Media
Webpage(s):
https://lastgift.ucsd.edu/
https://daveylab.ucsd.edu/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davey-smith-md-mas-facp-fidsa-40929a7a/
X (Twitter): @DaveySmithMD