Tim Schacker
Director, Program in HIV Medicine
Director, Clinical Translational Research Services, Clinical and Translational Science Institute
Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and International Medicine
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Introduction
Timothy Schacker, MD, is vice dean for research, professor of medicine, and director of the Program in HIV Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Schacker is interested in how HIV causes immune suppression and why antiretrovirals do not fully restore immunity. His group focuses on inflammatory damage in lymphatic tissues—the principal site of HIV infection—that results in fibrosis of the lymphatic structures required to maintain a normal population of CD4 cells. They are testing novel therapies to prevent and/or reverse this process and slow T cell depletion in HIV and improve their reconstitution when antiretroviral is begun.
Schacker is also the principal investigator of a federally funded program of projects designed to determine barriers to HIV eradication.
In addition, Schacker has established a collaboration with the Joint Clinical Research Center in Kampala, Uganda to study how constant exposure to common infections like tuberculosis, malaria, and helminthic infections affects rates of HIV transmission and progression.
