Dr Gianella graduated from University of Zurich (Switzerland) in 2002. After completing her training in Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease in Switzerland, she moved to sunny San Diego in 2009 to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). She joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine at UCSD in 2013. Dr Gianella is a translational research virologist. She uses basic science techniques to answer clinically relevant questions. Her main research interest gravitates around the study of HIV at different levels. Current research areas range from investigating HIV transmission dynamics and interactions with co-infecting viruses, to characterizing the establishment of the latent viral reservoir, understanding sex-differences in HIV infection and investigating clinical complications related to persistent immune activation.
Dr Gianella Weibel talks with Dr El-Bassel about factors that affect HIV health disparities in the United States and how couple-based HIV interventions can be implemented to address these inequalities.
Dr Gianella Weibel talks with Dr Li and Dr Dubé, investigators of a new study from the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, which uses an intensively monitored antiretroviral pause to identify changes in HIV reservoirs after anti-HIV medications are stopped.
The interactions between HIV, ART, human sexual behavior, and the gut microbiome are complex and sorting out these interactions will be important to design future interventions.
The stability of the latent HIV-1 reservoir presents a challenge to virus eradication. A recent study focuses on examining this mechanism in viral persistence.
Tenofovir gel reduced the incidence of HIV infection by 61% in women with Lactobacillus-dominant vaginal flora but only 18% in women with non-Lactobacillus bacteria, according to a new study.
Dr Sara Gianella Weibel talks with Anthony B, a patient with HIV and end-stage amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and the first participant enrolled in the “Last Gift” end-of-life study, about his experience as part of this new end-of-life model to study HIV persistence.
Dr Sara Gianella Weibel talks with Dr Davey Smith, head of the Division of Infectious Disease at the University of California, San Diego, about a proposed new model to study HIV persistence, called the Last Gift study.
Study looks at the decay of HIV viral load in the genital tract by comparing the effect of different drug families on treatment-naive HIV-infected patients.
Dr Sara Gianella talks with Brooke Sullivan, a transgender woman and HIV activist, about ways to improve transgender individuals’ involvement in HIV research.