Michaela Müller-Trutwin - Biography#

Michaela Müller-Trutwin is Professor at Institut Pasteur. Her work has focused on molecular and immunological mechanisms of viral evolution and control, in particular of HIV/AIDS. Through collaborations with Institutes in West- and Central Africa and South-East Asia, she contributed to understand the extreme worldwide diversity of HIV and their related simian immunodeficiency viruses. These studies had an impact for better understanding of the origin of HIV and for patient monitoring and vaccine candidate design. Subsequently, she got interested to decipher the mechanism underlying AIDS. For that, she pioneered the study of innate immune responses and genome-wide analyses in African Old world monkeys (OWM). Her studies were among those that provided strong evidence that inflammation is the driving force of AIDS. She then aimed to understand mechanisms of viral persistence and discovered previously unknown functions of NK cells in controlling SIV reservoirs in tissues. These results enhanced the interest of the field for studying NK cells in view of HIV cure therapies. She expanded her work to SARS-CoV-2 and demonstrated a role of adaptive NK cells in viral long-term persistence in alveolar macrophages. Allover, she aims to study fundamental mechanism that have relevance in the clinics, and to foster the new generation of scientists. She is a co-founding member of the Center for Innovative Therapies for infectious diseases (IDMIT) and participating in clinical trials. She has been for 10 years the chair of the nonhuman primate working group and since 2018 of the HIV basic & translational research at the French Agency for HIV and emerging diseases (ANRS-MIE). She initiated activities for young researchers. She has served as Dean of the Pasteur-Paris University PhD program and as Vice-president of the Scientific Council at Institut Pasteur. She has been invited to co-organize multiple international conferences and as plenary and keynote speaker to major conferences.