Peter Hunt, MD

Dr. Peter Hunt is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Interim Chief of the Division of Experimental Medicine at the University of California San Francisco.  His primary research focus is on the inflammatory consequences of HIV infection.  His translational research program seeks to understand both the causes and consequences of persistent immune activation both in the presence and the absence of antiretroviral therapy.  He collaborates extensively with a multi-disciplinary team of investigators to assess the impact of persistent immune activation on mortality and chronic diseases associated with aging as well as on the persistence of HIV in cellular reservoirs.  He also conducts pilot clinical trials of novel immune-based interventions designed to decrease immune activation and recently completed a term as Chair of the Inflammation Committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group.  Dr. Hunt has also led a translational research program in Mbarara, Uganda, focused on the determinants of immune recovery during suppressive antiretroviral therapy in that setting and has helped develop a large mucosal immunology program at San Francisco General Hospital focused on the impact of HIV on gut-associated lymphoid tissue and the determinants of microbial translocation in HIV infection.  In July, 2016, he also started a laboratory to identify the determinants of persistent adaptive immune defects in treated HIV infection, which likely contribute to infectious and neoplastic complications and may also serve as barriers to HIV cure.