Education
University of Southern California - PhD Candidate, 2012; Loyola Marymount University - Molecular Biology, BA, 2005
Background
Erik Serrao is a fourth-year Ph.D student in the USC School of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Science. He is studying in the laboratory of Dr. Nouri Neamati. Specifically, Erik is working to identify novel host cell cofactors of HIV-1 integrase and designing and developing small-molecule compounds to inhibit the interaction of these cofactors with integrase. For his CETCD Pre-doctoral Clinical and Translational Training Program proposal, Erik plans to build a collaboration between Dr. Neamati’s lab and that of Dr. Andrea Kovacs, from the Keck School of Medicine and Principal Investigator of the USC IMPAACT Clinical Trials Unit. Erik will work to characterize HIV-induced alterations in human gene expression by attempting to identify the precise immune cell type harboring these changes and to illustrate the effect of multiple commonly-prescribed HAART treatment regimes in reversing these alterations.