Janice E. Clements

Last updated
Janice Ellen Clements
Janice Clements May 2013 (cropped).jpg
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Maryland, College
Scientific career
FieldsVirology
InstitutionsJohns Hopkins University

Janice Ellen Clements is vice dean for faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine [1] and the Mary Wallace Stanton Professor of Faculty Affairs. [2] She is a professor in the departments of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology, Neurology, and Pathology, and has a joint appointment in molecular biology and genetics. Her molecular biology and virology research examines lentiviruses and how they cause neurological diseases.

Contents

Training and career

Clements earned a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Maryland. She pursued post-doctoral work at Johns Hopkins during the 1970s, working first with Bernard Weiss and then with Opendra "Bill" Narayan [3] and Richard T. Johnson. [1] Along with Diane Griffin and others, Clements was one of several trainees of Johnson who went on to notable academic careers at Johns Hopkins.

Clements became a faculty member at Johns Hopkins in 1978 as an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology and became a full professor in 1990, the 24th woman to achieve this rank at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. [2] Clements joined the Division of Comparative Medicine in 1988 and headed its retrovirus laboratory from 1992. Clements successfully convinced the school to elevate the division to department-level status, and in 2002 became the first director of the new department, later renamed the Department of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology. [1]

In 2000, Clements was appointed vice dean for the School of Medicine, taking over the duties of Catherine D. DeAngelis, who had left Johns Hopkins to become the first woman editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association .

Clements stepped down as director of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology in 2008. She was succeeded by Chris Zink, a longtime colleague of Clements.

Research

Clements has conducted and led research into numerous viruses, concentrating on the animal lentiviruses. Lentiviruses are a complex type of retroviruses, and include the human immunodeficiency viruses HIV-1 and HIV-2. Clements was the first to characterize the complex genome of the lentiviruses, describing the genomic structure of visna virus, a lentivirus of sheep. She performed similar work with caprine arthritis encephalitis virus (CAEV), a closely related virus of goats.

With the discovery of AIDS and its cause, HIV, Clements' work took on a new dimension of relevance. In 1985, she published an article with HIV co-discoverer Robert Gallo and others describing the relationship of HIV to visna virus. [4] This article helped to establish HIV as a lentivirus, not a leukemia virus as was originally thought. At the time, the origin of HIV was unknown, and Clements' work presented the possibility that HIV could have been transferred to humans from animals. Later, it was found that simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) strains from chimpanzee and monkey hosts were the likely progenitors of HIV.

In addition to her work with visna and CAEV, Clements has conducted extensive research into SIV and HIV. Clements and her laboratory have published over 160 scientific articles. Alongside collaborators including Chris Zink, Joseph L. Mankowski, and Kenneth Witwer, Clements has investigated the innate immune response to retrovirus infection in an animal model of HIV encephalitis. Her recent work includes the use of minocycline, a common antibiotic often used against acne, to protect against viral encephalitis [5] [6] and slow viral replication. [7] [8] With Zink, Mankowski and HIV researchers Joel Blankson and Bob Siliciano, Clements has also developed a model of highly active antiretroviral therapy to study viral reservoirs: where HIV conceals itself in the body. [9]

Advocacy

Clements has advocated and fostered the creation of opportunities and supportive environments for women in academia. She is a member of the steering committee of the Johns Hopkins Women's Leadership Council. [2]

In 2005, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine celebrated the promotion of the 100th woman to the rank of full professor in a ceremony organized by Clements and others at Johns Hopkins. The event was entitled "The Legacy of Mary Elizabeth Garrett, 100 Women Professors at Johns Hopkins Medicine" to honor the woman whose financial gift allowed the school of medicine to begin its first cohort of medical students in 1893. Garrett herself had stressed the importance of equal opportunity in medical education, specifying that the school must allow women and men alike to seek admission and "prizes, dignities or honor that are awarded by competitive examination, or regarded as rewards of merit." [2]

Related Research Articles

<i>Feline immunodeficiency virus</i> Species of virus

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a Lentivirus that affects cats worldwide, with 2.5% to 4.4% of felines being infected.

Lentivirus is a genus of retroviruses that cause chronic and deadly diseases characterized by long incubation periods, in humans and other mammalian species. The genus includes the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. Lentiviruses are distributed worldwide, and are known to be hosted in apes, cows, goats, horses, cats, and sheep as well as several other mammals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viral infectivity factor</span>

Viral infectivity factor, or Vif, is an accessory protein found in HIV and other lentiviruses. Its role is to disrupt the antiviral activity of the human enzyme APOBEC by targeting it for ubiquitination and cellular degradation. APOBEC is a cytidine deaminase enzyme that mutates viral nucleic acids.

Visna-maedi virus from the genus Lentivirus and subfamily Orthoretrovirinae, is a retrovirus that causes encephalitis and chronic pneumonitis in sheep. It is known as visna when found in the brain, and maedi when infecting the lungs. Lifelong, persistent infections in sheep occur in the lungs, lymph nodes, spleen, joints, central nervous system, and mammary glands; The condition is sometimes known as ovine progressive pneumonia (OPP), particularly in the United States, or Montana sheep disease. White blood cells of the monocyte/macrophage lineage are the main target of the virus.

Jembrana disease is an acute viral disease of cattle. While it produces relatively mild symptoms in taurine cattle, the Jembrana virus is particularly severe in Bali cattle where it has a fatality rate of approximately 17 percent. Its first documented outbreak occurred in 1964 in the Jembrana district of Bali, Indonesia. Within two years of its appearance the disease had killed an estimated 26,000 of the approximately 300,000 cattle on Bali Island. The Jembrana disease virus belongs to the genus Lentivirus, which include immunodeficiency viruses such as HIV. Instead of the chronic disease produced by most lentiviruses, Jembrana disease produces acute effects. After an incubation period of 5–12 days the disease produces symptoms including loss of appetite, fever, lethargy, enlargement of the lymph nodes, and diarrhea. There is at least one strain that has been sequenced.

The Central Nervous System controls most of the functions of the body and mind. It comprises the brain, spinal cord and the nerve fibers that branch off to all parts of the body. The Central Nervous System viral diseases are caused by viruses that attack the CNS. Existing and emerging viral CNS infections are major sources of human morbidity and mortality. Virus infections usually begin in the peripheral tissues, and can invade the mammalian system by spreading into the peripheral nervous system and more rarely the CNS. CNS is protected by effective immune responses and multi-layer barriers, but some viruses enter with high-efficiency through the bloodstream and some by directly infecting the nerves that innervate the tissues. Most viruses that enter can be opportunistic and accidental pathogens, but some like herpes viruses and rabies virus have evolved in time to enter the nervous system efficiently, by exploiting the neuronal cell biology. While acute viral diseases come on quickly, chronic viral conditions have long incubation periods inside the body. Their symptoms develop slowly and follow a progressive, fatal course.

Richard T. Johnson was a physician and scientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Johnson was a faculty member in the Department of Neurology since its inception in 1969 and was the former head of the department. His research into the effects of viruses on the central nervous system has been published in over 300 scientific articles, and Johnson was both a journal and book editor and the author of an influential textbook, Viral Infections of the Nervous System.

M. Christine "Chris" Zink is the director of the Department of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She also holds professorships in the Department of Pathology at Johns Hopkins and in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Zink researches the response of the immune system to retroviruses such as HIV and is currently investigating an animal model of antiretroviral therapy and the potential of a common antibiotic to prevent HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders.

Opendra "Bill" Narayan was an HIV/AIDS researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Kansas Medical Center. A veterinarian, Narayan researched animal models of HIV. His focus on finding a vaccine for retroviral infection had some success against a monkey retrovirus, SIV, and he is best known for engineering a type of HIV that could cause AIDS-like disease in monkeys.

Robert F. Siliciano is a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Siliciano (sill-ih-CAH-noh) has a joint appointment in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins. Siliciano researches the mechanisms by which the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) remains latent in the human body.

Caprine arthritis encephalitis virus (CAEV) is a retrovirus which infects goats and cross-reacts immunologically with HIV, due to being from the same family of viruses. CAEV cannot be transmitted to humans, including through the consumption of milk from an infected goat. There is no evidence that CAEV can cure HIV in humans.

Bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV) is a retrovirus belonging to the genus Lentivirus. It is similar to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and infects cattle. The cells primarily infected are lymphocytes and monocytes/macrophages.

Joel N. Blankson is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. Blankson is an expert on HIV infection, particularly HIV latency and long-term control of HIV infection. He is a lead investigator in studies on these topics and is frequently interviewed in the scientific and popular press. Blankson also practices internal and infectious diseases medicine in Lutherville, Maryland.

Stuart C. Ray is an American physician. He is Vice Chair of Medicine for Data Integrity and Analytics, Associate Director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Training Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and a Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. Ray also holds appointments in Viral Oncology and the Division of Health Sciences Informatics. He is affiliated with the Institute for Computational Medicine at Johns Hopkins and is licensed to practice medicine in Maryland.

Beatrice H. Hahn is an American virologist and biomedical researcher best known for work which established that HIV, the virus causing AIDS, began as a virus passed from apes to humans. She is a professor of Medicine and Microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In November 2002, Discover magazine listed Hahn as one of the 50 most important women scientists.

Eric Murnane Poeschla is an American infectious disease physician, virologist and innate immunologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Witwer</span> American biologist

Kenneth W. Witwer is an associate professor of molecular and comparative pathobiology and neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. As nominated President-Elect of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV), Witwer previously served as Secretary General and Executive Chair of Science and Meetings of the society. His laboratory studies extracellular vesicles (EVs), noncoding and extracellular RNA (exRNA), and enveloped viruses, including HIV and SARS-CoV-2. Witwer is a member of the Richman Family Precision Medicine Center of Excellence in Alzheimer's Disease, has advised the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US National Institutes of Health, and is an associate editor of the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles.

Ya-Chi Ho is a Taiwanese infectious disease researcher and Associate Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Medicine at Yale University. Her research centers on the interaction between HIV and the host's immune system with the ultimate goal of curing HIV/AIDS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amanda M. Brown</span> American immunologist and microbiologist

Amanda Brown is an American immunologist and microbiologist as well as an associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Brown is notable for cloning one of the first recombinant HIV viruses and developing a novel method to visualize HIV infected cells using GFP fluorescence.

Howard E. Gendelman is an American physician-scientist whose research intersects the disciplines of neuroimmunology, pharmacology, and infectious diseases. Gendelman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His research is focused on harnessing immune responses for therapeutic gain in HIV/AIDS and Neurodegenerative disease. He is the Margaret R. Larson Professor of infectious diseases and internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Johns Hopkins School of Medicine faculty webpage
  2. 1 2 3 4 Milestone for Women Profs at SOM: 100-plus women have now reach rank of full professor Greg Rienzi, The JHU Gazette, March 7, 2005.
  3. ↑ Shilpa Buch, Barry T. Rouse, Howard E. Gendelman, M. Christine Zink and Janice E. Clements (January 2008). "Opendra "Bill" Narayan (1936–2007): A Personal Tribute to a Friend, Teacher, and Colleague". Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology . 3 (1): 1–4. doi:10.1007/s11481-008-9101-y. S2CID   44419203.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ↑ Gonda MA, Wong-Staal F, Gallo RC, Clements JE, Narayan O, Gilden RV (Jan 1985). "Sequence homology and morphologic similarity of HTLV-III and visna virus, a pathogenic lentivirus". Science. 227 (4683): 173–7. Bibcode:1985Sci...227..173G. doi:10.1126/science.2981428. PMID   2981428.
  5. ↑ Zink MC, Uhrlaub J, DeWitt J, Voelker T, Bullock B, Mankowski J, Tarwater P, Clements J, Barber S (April 2005). "Neuroprotective and anti-human immunodeficiency virus activity of minocycline". JAMA. 293 (16): 2003–11. doi: 10.1001/jama.293.16.2003 . PMID   15855434.
  6. ↑ "Common Antibiotic May Fight HIV Brain Disease" Miranda Hitti, WebMD, April 26, 2005 on: foxnews.com
  7. ↑ Szeto, G.; Brice, A.; Yang, H.; Barber, S.; Siliciano, R.; Clements, J. (2010). "Minocycline attenuates HIV infection and reactivation by suppressing cellular activation in human CD4+ T cells". The Journal of Infectious Diseases. 201 (8): 1132–1140. doi:10.1086/651277. PMC   3739045 . PMID   20205570.
  8. ↑ "Acne Drug May Help in the Fight Against AIDS" Randy Dotinga, Business Week, March 18, 2010.
  9. ↑ Dinoso, J.; Rabi, S.; Blankson, J.; Gama, L.; Mankowski, J.; Siliciano, R.; Zink, M.; Clements, J. (2009). "A Simian Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Macaque Model To Study Viral Reservoirs That Persist during Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy". Journal of Virology. 83 (18): 9247–9257. doi:10.1128/JVI.00840-09. PMC   2738256 . PMID   19570871.
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