Isabel Olivares

Isabel Olivares received the bachelor’s degree in general medicine and surgery, and the Ph.D. degree from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). She has been a Research Scientist with Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), since 1990. She is actively involved in virological research. First, she studied herpes simplex virus type 2 during her Ph.D. degree. As a Postdoctoral Fellow, she contributed to studies on the African swine fever virus. Since 1990, her research has been devoted to study several facets of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type I (HIV-1). Initially, she was mainly involved in molecular epidemiology, variability, and genetic characterization studies of HIV-1 isolates. She has participated in the “WHO Network for HIV Isolation and Characterization” as it was the first WHO Laboratory Network organized for HIV-1 studies, with great relevance. Since 1996, she has been focusing on HIV-1 infection pathogenesis by “in vitro” experiments. She has generated and characterized two infectious molecular clones from a patient HIV-1 isolate. This is a remarkably useful tool for multiple “in vitro” studies. She has collaborated with Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa on three coordinated research projects to study the implications of the viral reverse transcriptase domain for reverse transcriptase copy fidelity, viral replicative capacity, and viral resistance to antiretrovirals. Since 2000, she has also been focused on studying HIV-1 persistence using various persistently infected cell lines obtained in the laboratory as a model to identify viral or cellular factors associated with viral persistence. She also explored lethal mutagenesis, a new antiviral strategy to extinguish HIV-1 through elevated mutation rate in a persistently infected cell line, in two coordinated research projects. Since 2003, she has been a member of the RETICS AIDS NETWORK, focusing on the viral and host features of LTNP patients. Recently, she has been interested in the search for new treatments against HIV-1 targeting host cell proteins, studying the antiviral effect of an Ataxia telangiectasia, and Rad3-related protein (ATR) inhibitor on HIV-1 replication. She has participated in numerous research projects and she is the author of 42 peer-reviewed articles.