Julia G Prado

Julia G Prado
IrsiCaixa Institute for AIDS Research | IRSICAIXA

PhD

About

126
Publications
10,876
Reads
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5,939
Citations
Citations since 2017
54 Research Items
1790 Citations
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2017201820192020202120222023050100150200250300
2017201820192020202120222023050100150200250300
Additional affiliations
May 2009 - December 2012
Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol
Position
  • PostDoc Position
January 2006 - April 2009
University of Oxford
Position
  • Marie Curie European fellowship
January 2000 - December 2005
Irsicaixa - Institut de recerca de la SIDA
Position
  • PhD Student

Publications

Publications (126)
Article
Full-text available
The role of T cells in the control of SARS-CoV-2 infection has been underestimated in favor of neutralizing antibodies. However, cellular immunity is essential for long-term viral control and protection from disease severity. To understand T-cell immunity in the absence of antibody generation we focused on a group of SARS-CoV-2 Non-Seroconvertors (...
Article
Full-text available
Background Understanding the immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus is critical for efficient monitoring and control strategies. The ProHEpic-19 cohort provides a fine-grained description of the kinetics of antibodies after SARS-CoV-2 infection with an exceptional resolution over 17 months. Methods We established a cohort of 769 healthcare worker...
Article
Full-text available
HIV non-progression despite persistent viraemia is rare among antiretroviral therapy (ART)-naïve adults, but relatively common among ART-naïve children. Previous studies indicate that ART-naïve paediatric slow-progressors (PSPs) adopt immune evasion strategies similar to those described in the SIV natural hosts. However, the mechanisms underlying t...
Article
Full-text available
Background: A SARS-CoV-2 protein-based heterodimer vaccine, PHH-1V, has been shown to be safe and well-tolerated in healthy young adults in a first-in-human, Phase I/IIa study dose-escalation trial. Here, we report the interim results of the Phase IIb HH-2, where the immunogenicity and safety of a heterologous booster with PHH-1V is assessed versu...
Article
Full-text available
The co-expression of inhibitory receptors (IRs) is a hallmark of CD8+ T-cell exhaustion (Tex) in people living with HIV-1 (PLWH). Understanding alterations of IRs expression in PLWH on long-term antiretroviral treatment (ART) remains elusive but is critical to overcoming CD8+ Tex and designing novel HIV-1 cure immunotherapies. To address this, we c...
Article
Full-text available
Current COVID-19 vaccines have been associated with a decline in infection rates, prevention of severe disease and a decrease in mortality rates. However, SARS-CoV-2 variants are continuously evolving, and development of new accessible COVID-19 vaccines is essential to mitigate the pandemic. Here, we present data on preclinical studies in mice of a...
Article
Full-text available
The implementation and access to combined antiretroviral treatment (cART) have dramatically improved the quality of life of people living with HIV (PLWH). However, some comorbidities, such as neurological disorders associated with HIV infection still represent a serious clinical challenge. Soluble factors in plasma that are associated with control...
Article
Full-text available
Background Long-Term Non-Progressors (LTNPs) are untreated Human Immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infected individuals able to control disease progression for prolonged periods. However, the LTNPs status is temporary, as viral load increases followed by decreases in CD4 + T-cell counts. Control of HIV-1 infection in LTNPs viremic controllers,...
Article
Full-text available
Mass vaccination campaigns reduced COVID-19 incidence and severity. Here, we evaluated the immune responses developed in SARS-CoV-2-uninfected patients with predominantly antibody-deficiencies (PAD) after three mRNA-1273 vaccine doses. PAD patients were classified based on their immunodeficiency: unclassified primary antibody-deficiency (unPAD, n=9...
Article
Full-text available
We describe a case of a patient who experienced recurrent COVID-19 pneumonia over a period of 123 days. Neither remdesivir nor convalescent plasma were temporally associated with viral clearance or increased plasma neutralization capacity. Antibody levels remained low until day 151 and cellular immunity increased overtime with no viral evolution.
Article
Full-text available
From March to September 2020, researchers working at a biomedical scientific campus in Spain faced two lockdowns and various mobility restrictions that affected their social and professional lifestyles. The working group “Women in Science,” which acts as an independent observatory of scientific gender inequalities on campus launched an online surve...
Preprint
Full-text available
The expression of inhibitory receptors (IRs) is a hallmark of CD8+ T-cell exhaustion (Tex) in people living with HIV-1 (PLWH). Understanding the dynamics of IRs expression in PLWH on long-term antiretroviral treatment (ART) is critical to overcoming CD8+ Tex and designing broadly applicable HIV-1 immunotherapies for cure. To address this, we combin...
Preprint
Background A SARS-CoV-2 protein-based heterodimer vaccine, PHH-1V, has been shown to be safe and well-tolerated in healthy young adults in a first-in-human, Phase I/IIa study dose-escalation trial. Here, we report the interim results of the Phase IIb HH-2, where the immunogenicity and safety of a heterologous booster with PHH-1V is assessed versus...
Article
Full-text available
The diagnosis of the post-COVID condition is usually achieved by excluding other diseases; however, cognitive changes are often found in the post-COVID disorder. Therefore, monitoring and treating the recovery from the post-COVID condition is necessary to establish biomarkers to guide the diagnosis of symptoms, including cognitive impairment. Our s...
Preprint
Full-text available
Purpose Mass vaccination campaigns have reduced the incidence and severity of COVID-19. However, there is limited information about how patients with predominantly antibody-deficiencies (PAD) respond to COVID-19 vaccination. Here, we evaluated humoral and cellular responses developed in SARS-CoV-2-naïve PAD individuals after three mRNA-1273 vaccine...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Understanding the immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus is critical for efficient monitoring and defence strategies. The ProHEpic-19 cohort provides a fine-grained description of the kinetics of antibodies after SARS-CoV-2 infection with an exceptional resolution over 17 months.Methods We established a cohort of 769 health professional...
Preprint
Full-text available
The current COVID-19 vaccines have been associated with a decline in infection rates, prevention of severe disease and decrease in mortality rates. However, new variants of concern (VoCs) are continuously evolving, making the development of new accessible COVID-19 vaccines essential in order to mitigate the pandemic. Here we present data on preclin...
Article
Full-text available
HIV-1 viremic nonprogressors (VNPs) represent a very rare HIV-1 extreme phenotype. VNPs are characterized by persistent high plasma viremia and maintenance of CD4+ T cell counts in the absence of treatment. However, the causes of nonpathogenic HIV-1 infection in VNPs remain elusive. Here, we identified for the first time two VNPs who experienced th...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: Understanding humoral responses and seroprevalence in SARS-CoV-2 infection is essential for guiding vaccination strategies in both infected and uninfected individuals. Methods: We determine the kinetics of IgM against the nucleocapsid (N) and IgG against the spike (S) and N proteins of SARS-CoV-2 in a cohort of 860 health professionals...
Article
Full-text available
Background SARS-CoV-2 reinfections have been reported; however, most cases are milder than the primary infection. We report the first case of a life-threatening critical presentation of a SARS-CoV-2 reinfection. Case presentation A 62-year male from Palamós (Spain) suffered a first mild COVID-19 episode in March 2020, confirmed by 2 independent SA...
Article
Full-text available
Current efforts aimed at finding a definitive cure for HIV-1 infection are hampered mainly by the persistence of a viral reservoir in latently infected cells. While complete viral eradication from the body remains elusive, finding a functional cure to enable control of viremia without the need for continuous treatment is a key goal.
Preprint
Full-text available
The role of T cells in the control of SARS-CoV-2 infection has been underestimated in favor of neutralizing antibodies. However, cellular immunity is essential for long-term viral control and protection from disease severity. To understand T-cell immunity in the absence of antibody generation we focused on a group of SARS-CoV-2 Non-Seroconvertors (...
Article
Full-text available
HIV represents a persistent infection which negatively alters the immune system. New tools to reinvigorate different immune cell populations to impact HIV are needed. Herein, a novel nanotool for the specific enhancement of the natural killer (NK) immune response towards HIV-infected T-cells has been developed. Bispecific Au nanoparticles (BiAb-AuN...
Poster
Full-text available
The Life Science Community of Practice LifeSciCoP is part of ACT (act on gender eu an Horizon 2020 project that seeks to advance gender equality at universities, research centres and research funding organisations The ACT project set up and supports an international network of Communities of Practice ( as agents to develop gender equality actions a...
Article
Full-text available
Synthetic antigens based on consensus sequences that represent circulating viral isolates are sensitive, time saving and cost-effective tools for in vitro immune monitoring and to guide immunogen design. When based on a representative sequence database, such consensus sequences can effectively be used to test immune responses in exposed and infecte...
Conference Paper
Introduction: Treatment with anti PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies has demonstrated clinical activity in different types of solid tumors, but only 20 to 30% of patients (pts) respond to these immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). Therefore, predictive biomarkers of response that can assist in pt selection are urgently needed. Single biomarker expression, like...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Virological failure (VF) to boosted PIs with a high genetic barrier is not usually linked to the development of resistance-associated mutations in the protease gene. Methods: From a cohort of 520 HIV-infected subjects treated with lopinavir/ritonavir or darunavir/ritonavir monotherapy, we retrospectively identified nine patients with VF...
Article
Full-text available
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Article
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Female children and adults typically generate more efficacious immune responses to vaccines and infections than age-matched males, but also suffer greater immunopathology and auto-immune disease. We here describe, in a cohort of > 170 in utero HIV-infected infants from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, fetal immune sex differences resulting in a 1.5-2-f...
Article
Full-text available
Importance Therapies targeting the programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) receptor or its ligand (PD-L1), such as the humanized monoclonal antibody durvalumab, have shown durable clinical responses in several tumor types. However, concerns about the safety and feasibility of PD-1/PD-L1 blockade in HIV-1–infected individuals have led to the exclusion of the...
Poster
To attain the control or elimination of HIV-1 infection it is critical to delineate immune interventions capable of boosting or reinvigorating HIV-1-specific CD8+ T-cell responses. Immune interventions, including therapeutic vaccines or immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), have been postulated to achieve this goal. However, the potency of combining...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Pembrolizumab is an immune checkpoint inhibitor against programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) approved for therapy in metastatic melanoma. PD-1 expression is associated with a diminished functionality in HIV-1 specific-CD8+ T cells. It is thought that PD-1 blockade could contribute to reinvigorate antiviral immunity and reduce the HIV...
Article
Full-text available
HIV viral reservoirs are established very early during infection. Resident memory T cells (TRM) are present in tissues such as the lower female genital tract, but the contribution of this subset of cells to the pathogenesis and persistence of HIV remains unclear. Here, we show that cervical CD4+TRM display a unique repertoire of clusters of differe...
Article
2501 Background: Durvalumab (MEDI4736), a programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) blocking antibody, is currently approved for treatment of several cancer types. As HIV-1-infected (HIV+) patients have been excluded from cancer clinical trials, there are no data on the safety of durvalumab in this population. Methods: DURVAST (NCT03094286) is a multi...
Article
Full-text available
Relapsed/refractory T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) has a dismal outcome, and no effective targeted immunotherapies for T-ALL exist. The extension of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells (CARTs) to T-ALL remains challenging because the shared expression of target antigens between CARTs and T-ALL blasts leads to CART fratricide. CD1a...
Article
Full-text available
The so-called shock and kill therapies aim to combine HIV-1 reactivation by latency-reversing agents (LRA) with immune clearance to purge the HIV-1 reservoir. The clinical use of LRA has demonstrated detectable perturbations in the HIV-1 reservoir without measurable reductions to date. Consequently, fundamental questions concerning the limitations...
Article
Full-text available
Antiviral restriction factors are host cellular proteins that constitute a first line of defense blocking viral replication and propagation. In addition to interfering at critical steps of the viral replication cycle, some restriction factors also act as innate sensors triggering innate responses against infections. Accumulating evidence suggests a...
Article
Full-text available
CD32 has been shown to be preferentially expressed in latently HIV-1-infected cells in an in vitro model of quiescent CD4 T cells. Here we show that stimulation of CD4+ T cells with IL-2, IL-7, PHA, and anti-CD3/CD28 antibodies induces T-cell proliferation, co-expression of CD32 and the activation of the markers HLA-DR and CD69. HIV-1 infection inc...
Article
Full-text available
Viremic nonprogressors (VNPs) constitute a very scarce group of untreated human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-infected individuals who maintain stable CD4⁺ T cell counts despite high levels of HIV-1 replication. The specific factors associated with this atypical control of the HIV infection have been poorly described. Since specific T cell...
Article
Full-text available
HIV-1 elite controllers (EC) maintain undetectable viral loads (VL) in the absence of antiretroviral treatment. However, these subjects have heterogeneous clinical outcomes, including a proportion that loses HIV-1 control over time. In this work, we compared, in a longitudinal design, transient EC, analyzed before and after the loss of virological...
Article
Full-text available
The well-characterized association between HLA-B*27:05 and protection against HIV disease progression has been linked to immunodominant HLA-B*27:05- restricted CD8⁺ T-cell responses toward the conserved Gag KK10 (residues 263 to 272) and polymerase (Pol) KY9 (residues 901 to 909) epitopes. We studied the impact of the 3 amino acid differences betwe...
Article
Full-text available
Despite the major role of Gag in establishing resistance of HIV-1 to protease inhibitors (PIs), very limited data are available on the total contribution of Gag residues to resistance to PIs. To identify in detail Gag residues and structural interfaces associated with the development of HIV-1 resistance to PIs, we traced viral evolution under the p...
Article
Full-text available
Importance: New therapeutics to tackle HIV-1 infection should aim to combine rapid innate viral sensing and cellular immune recognition. Such strategies could prevent seeding of the viral reservoir and the immune damage that occurs during acute infection. The non-human TRIM5 variants, rhesus TRIM5α (RhT5) and TRIM-cyclophilin A (TCyp), are attract...
Article
Full-text available
Importance: Host mechanisms of natural HIV-1 control are not fully understood. In a longitudinal study of antiretroviral therapy (ART)-naïve individuals, we show that those with protective HLA-I alleles subsequently experienced virologic failure compared to those without protective alleles. Among individuals with protective HLA-I alleles, viremic...
Article
Full-text available
Importance: There is a strong scientific interest in developing strategies to eradicate the HIV-1 reservoir. Very rare HIV-1 infected patients are able to spontaneously control viremia for long periods of time (HIV-1 controllers, HIC) and are put forward as a model of HIV-1 remission. Here, we show that the low viral reservoirs found in HIC are a...
Article
Full-text available
Unlabelled: Monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MDDC) stimulate CD8 cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) by presenting endogenous and exogenous viral peptides via major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) molecules. MDDC are poorly susceptible to HIV-1, in part due to the presence of SAMHD1, a cellular enzyme that depletes intracellular deoxynucleos...
Article
Full-text available
HLA class I polymorphism has a major influence on adult HIV disease progression. An important mechanism mediating this effect is the impact on viral replicative capacity (VRC) of the escape mutations selected in response to HLA-restricted CD8+ T-cell responses. Factors that contribute to slow progression in pediatric HIV infection are less well und...
Article
Full-text available
OBJECTIVE:: The study of HIV-1 rapid progressors has been limited to specific case reports. Nevertheless, identification and characterization of the viral and host factors involved in rapid progression are crucial when attempting to uncover the correlates of rapid disease outcome. DESIGN:: We carried out comparative functional analyses in rapid pro...
Article
Full-text available
Unlabelled: HLA-B*57:01 and HLA-B*57:03, the most prevalent HLA-B*57 subtypes in Caucasian and African populations, respectively, are the HLA alleles most protective against HIV disease progression. Understanding the mechanisms underlying this immune control is of critical importance, yet they remain unclear. Unexplained differences are observed i...