Hunter Courtney

Background

About Hunter Courtney

As an incoming MD/PhD student in the UCLA-Caltech Medical Scientist Training Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine, I endeavor to use my combined training in medicine and biomedical research to innovate immunotherapeutic approaches to preventing and treating infectious diseases, particularly in immunocompromised populations. I am interested in the immunobiology of the cells that underpin the humoral immune response, namely B and CD4+ T lymphocytes, in the setting of persistent viral infections such as HIV-1 so that they may be harnessed in cure-oriented and vaccination strategies. Beyond pioneering antiviral immunotherapies at the bench, I am equally as passionate about the design, management, and analysis of clinical trials that seek to implement these therapies in first-in-human clinical trials. By capitalizing on having a foot in both the clinical and laboratory worlds, I intend to design trials to answer clinically meaningful questions about the interventions studied so that they may be brought through the development pipeline in a way that is both efficient without compromising safety. I hope that situating myself in this juncture will allow me to conduct truly translational research in infectious diseases by relieving the bottleneck that can occur between the basic science and clinical research worlds. Ultimately, my goal as an infectious diseases physician-scientist is to impart the greatest impact of my laboratory-based work on as many lives as possible, with each half of this chimeric career informing the other half.