Dongmei Li, PhD

Current HIV/AIDS Research Activities:

• During the past year, a supplemental NIH-NIAID grant was awarded to Dr. Mary Young, MD, Division of ID, GU-Hospital and Director of the HIV Women's Program for her studies on HIV in females. I was part of that research effort. The proposal was to determine if probiotic treatment of women that are patients in this program provides benefit in eradicating Candida species from mucosal surfaces. Treated versus untreated, HIV+ and HIV- patients were compared. My role in the project was to determine colonization rates of Candida species from both the oral and vaginal mucosa. We identified numerous species of Candida and have kept these isolates to determine their resistance to the triazole fluconazole as well as micafungin. Our data indicated: 1) higher colonization rates from both the oral and vaginal mucosa in HIV+ patients compared to HIV- patients; 2) we did not observe any affect of the probiotic on the total numbers of organism from each site. However, these isolates (100+) will be used to evaluate their susceptibility to the drugs mentioned above as well as our new antifungal compounds. The second part of the proposal focuses upon the verification of the target of one of our patented compounds.