Project: Enhancing HIV management and HIV cure research through CRISPR-based viral load testing at the point of care
Pasricha Group
Currently, HIV viral load (VL) monitoring, essential for maintaining health and preventing onward transmission, relies on PCR, requiring intravenous blood collection and laboratory processing. There are no bedside/point of care tests (PoCTs) approved for rapid monitoring of VL for HIV. This limits access, particularly in low income and remote settings, with delayed results putting sexual partners at risk of infection. There is also demand for a PoCT for HIV VL monitoring in the growing field of HIV cure research, to improve acceptability and safety of HIV cure clinical trials that pause HIV treatments in their protocols. This program focuses on the development of a CRISPR based PoCT test for HIV VL monitoring, and will incorporate both assay development as well as end-user engagement (acceptability surveys).
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information and application enquiries
Pasricha Group
1 vacancies
The Pasricha Lab is passionate about developing and improving diagnostic tools for the detection of infectious diseases. With a heavy emphasis on translational research, we hope to see our research contribute to early diagnosis and improved disease control and surveillance. We work closely with clinicians, laboratory scientists at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) and industry partners on infectious diseases who need real-time responses. All students are mentored by multiple members of our team, experts in bioinformatic analysis, microbiology and molecular laboratory techniques. Our students are also given the opportunity to present their work to collaborators and clinicians.
Pasricha Group Current Projects
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Innovating point-of-care diagnostics for the early and rapid detection of invasive fungal pathogens
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science
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Transforming infectious disease diagnostics with human biomarkers of infection
PhD/MPhil
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Enhancing HIV management and HIV cure research through CRISPR-based viral load testing at the point of care
PhD/MPhil
Research degrees at the Doherty Institute are administered by the University of Melbourne.