David Ho

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Dr. David Ho

David Da-i Ho (何大一, pinyin: Hé Dàyī) (born November 3, 1952) is a Taiwanese American AIDS researcher famous for the use of protease inhibitors in treating HIV-infected patients.

Born in Taichung, Taiwan to Paul (an engineer and soldier) and Sonia Ho, David Ho immigrated at twelve to unite with his father, who had been in the USA since nine years earlier. He grew up in Los Angeles and received his BS degree summa cum laude from the California Institute of Technology (1974) and his MD from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (1978). Subsequently, he did his clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at UCLA School of Medicine (1978-1982) and Massachusetts General Hospital (1982-1985), respectively. He was a resident in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in 1981 when he came into contact with some of the first reported cases of what was later identified as AIDS.

Ho was one of the first scientists to propose that AIDS was caused by a virus. Among an impressive list of seminal contributions to the field, he is perhaps most recognized for the elucidation of the dynamic nature of HIV replication in infected persons.^[1] This basic understanding led Dr. Ho and his coworkers to champion combination antiretroviral therapy, including the use of protease inhibitors,^[2] that has resulted in dramatic reductions in AIDS-associated mortality in developed countries since 1996. Dr. Ho continues to pursue therapeutic studies that attempt to eradicate HIV. In addition, his research team is now devoting considerable efforts to develop a vaccine to halt the spread of the AIDS epidemic.

Ho shifted his work from treating late in the illness to finding ways to fight the disease early on. Ho devised the method of treating HIV with "cocktails". He theorized that combining the powerful protease inhibitor drugs with other HIV medications would provide a more effective way to treat the disease.

David Ho was the 1996 TIME's Man of the Year. Dr. Ho has been elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica (Republic of China), and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy. He is currently professor and scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at the Rockefeller University in New York.

[edit] Quotes

"My father left Taiwan to come to the United States to pursue graduate studies in engineering. So my brother and I were left in my mother's care, and in essence we grew up in Taiwan without my father being present."
"This is a problem for the world and therefore we're going to solve it."

[edit] Sources

^ Ho DD, Neumann AU, Perelson AS, et al. (1995) Rapid turnover of plasma virions and CD4 lymphocytes in HIV-1 infection. Nature 373:123-6
^ Ho DD (1995) Time to hit HIV, early and hard. New Engl. J. Med. 333: 450-1