HIV assembly, maturation and drug resistance - Part 1

13th Annual UMN-Mayo Lectures in Virology and Gene Therapy - Dr. Eric Freed

Dr. Freed earned his undergraduate degree in Molecular and Cell Biology at Penn State University, where he conducted undergraduate research in the lab of Dr. David Shalloway. He pursued a Ph.D. degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the supervision of Dr. Rex Risser and Dr. Howard Temin. He did postdoctoral research at UW-Madison under the supervision of Dr. Howard Temin and then accepted a Staff Fellow position in the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology (LMM) under the guidance of Dr. Malcom Martin. Dr. Freed became a tenure-track principal investigator in the LMM and was tenured in 2002. He then moved in 2003 to become a Senior Investigator and Head of the Virus-Cell Interaction Section in the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program (DRP), Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, Maryland. In 2014, Dr. Freed became the Deputy Director of the HIV DRP, and in 2015 became the Director of the HIV DRP.

Dr. Freed is an internationally-renowned expert in the study of retrovirus assembly, where he and his colleagues have made many seminal contributions that have advanced our understanding of multiple steps in the retrovirus assembly pathway, as well as specific roles of the envelope and Gag proteins in these processes.

Dr. Freed has received numerous honors and other forms of scientific recognition, including the NCI Women Scientists Advisors Mentoring and Leadership Award (2021), Elected Fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology (2019), KT Jeang Retrovirology Prize (2018), Chair of the AIDS Discovery and Development of Therapeutics NIH Study Section (2016-2017),  Pennsylvania State University College of Science Outstanding Alumni Award (2014), "Top 25 Reviewer" for Journal of Virology (2011). Dr. Freed has served as the founding Editor-in-Chief of Viruses (MDPI) for the past 15 years (2009-present) as well as serving as an Editor for the Journal of Molecular Biology (2012-present), Sciences Advances (2019-present), and has been an Associate Book Editor for Fields Virology as well as chapter author.