Nell S. Lurain, PhD, has studied human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) for more than 30 years. Her early studies focused on the molecular basis of HCMV antiviral drug resistance using HCMV clinical strains, and her laboratory has continued to test clinical HCMV isolates for resistance to the three antiviral drugs approved for patient therapy: ganciclovir, foscarnet and cidofovir. The resistance has been determined both phenotypically by plaque reduction assay and genotypically by sequencing of the HCMV UL97 and DNA polymerase (UL54) genes. Subsequent analysis of other regions of the HCMV genome in clinical isolates led to her lab’s discovery of significant sequence variability within three viral genes encoding potential immunomodulatory products: UL144, UL146, and UL147. As a result, her team has propagated many clinical strains that have been phenotypically and genotypically characterized based on these variant loci. These characterized HCMV clinical strains along with genotypically and phenotypically-characterized drug-resistant strains will be available to test whether monoclonal antibodies can inhibit proliferation and propagation of HCMV and whether there are strain-specific differences in susceptibility, which are associated with genotypic differences.
Aside from molecular studies of HCMV, Lurain designs and coordinates projects that require acquisition and handling of clinical specimens. She has served on a number of national working groups of the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group, which have targeted specific AIDS-related opportunistic viral infections including HCMV. Through this work, she has participated in several collaborative studies involving laboratories at multiple academic medical centers.
