Beth Jamieson, Ph.D. ’89

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Beth Jamieson Ph.D. ’89 is one of the team of UCLA researchers working to stamp out HIV. Each day, the work she and her team do may be taking UCLA closer to developing an HIV vaccine.

Jamieson began her studies with of viral pathogenesis as a graduate student. After a postdoctoral fellowship in immunology, she returned to viral pathogenesis by pursuing a second postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA, studying HIV-pathogenesis in a mouse model. In 1994, she was appointed to the research faculty at UCLA as an assistant research biologist. She joined the UCLA faculty as an assistant professor and director of the Janis V. Giorgi Flow Cytometry Core Facility in 2000 and continues to pursue HIV-related research.

Jamieson’s laboratory is currently investigating immune responses to HIV before and after anti-retroviral therapy with particular emphasis on understanding the dynamic interaction between CD8+ T-cells and their respective HIV-derived epitopes. In addition, she investigates the cellular reservoirs for HIV in order to understand the molecular and cellular events that lead to residual HIV infection in the face of potent antiretroviral therapy. Her laboratory is studying the contribution of the thymus to T-cell reconstitution in HIV infected individuals, extending her earlier findings that the adult thymus continues to function well into adulthood despite the earlier misconception that this organ ceased to generate new T-cells after puberty.

In addition to studying the immune response that follows natural HIV infection, Jamieson’s laboratory is determining immune responses to HIV vaccination. In collaboration with other UCLA researchers, she is investigating the optimal site for vaccine administration with the goal of eliciting strong mucosal immune responses to HIV. As infection across mucosal barriers is the most common mode of HIV transmission, optimizing the potential for vaccines to elicit mucosal protection is critical and could impact the way in which HIV vaccines are tested in the future.