"I realized that the issues in Kenya were so critical — for women, for infants, for high risk groups — that this was a place where the science you do could actually impact public health."
— Dr. Julie Overbaugh
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Overbaugh
Julie Overbaugh, PhD
- Professor, Human Biology Division, Fred Hutch
- Professor, Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutch
- Member, Pathogen-Associated Malignancies Integrated Research Center (PAM IRC), Fred Hutch
- Endowed Chair for Graduate Education, Fred Hutch
Background
Dr. Julie Overbaugh studies HIV. She is particularly interested in factors that influence HIV transmission. She has been involved in decades-long research studies in Kenya that focus on HIV transmission, from mother to infant and in sex workers. In the 1990s, Dr. Overbaugh was part of the team that highlighted the risk of HIV transmission in breast milk, giving HIV-positive mothers important information that could protect their children. Drawing on samples collected during this groundbreaking trial, Dr. Overbaugh has also outlined characteristics of a mother’s immune response against HIV that can protect her infant, and she charted aspects of the infant immune response that could help improve HIV vaccine design. Her research in sex workers highlighted the role that other infections play in shaping the number of HIV variants that hop from one person to another. Her team also studied how the immune system responds when a person already infected with HIV is infected a second time with a new strain.
Education
Postdoctoral Fellow, Cancer Biology, Harvard University
PhD, Biochemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder
Research Interests
The focus of research in the Overbaugh lab is on mechanisms of viral pathogenesis. Her lab studies several retroviruses, with a particular focus on those that lead to a prolonged chronic asymptomatic infection followed by eventual development of immunodeficiency disease (FeLV, SIV and HIV).