Caribbean Primate Research Center

Staff Members - Associate Investigator

Idalí Martínez, Ph.D.
Associate Investigator
Caribbean Primate Research Center
Professor, Dept. of Microbiology
UPR-Medical Sciences Campus


Infection with dengue (DEN) viruses has become a major public health problem in the tropics and an emerging threat for the United States. There are 4 serotypes of this virus that cause diseases ranging widely in severity, from self-limited dengue fever (DF) to potentially fatal dengue hemorrhagic fever-dengue shock syndrome (DHF/DSS). Currently, no licensed vaccine is available to prevent DEN virus infections. Thus, the main goal of our laboratory is to develop an effective tetravalent DEN vaccine. Toward this effort, we have developed expression vectors encoding prM/env and NS1 genes of DEN-2 and DEN-4. Several of these vectors have been tested as vaccine candidates in mice and we are initiating the evaluation of a DEN-2 DNA vaccine in non-human primates. We are currently working on the construction of DNA vaccines against the other two Den serotypes; Den-3 and Den-3.

Research Support

1. R21 AI055814-01, 08-01-2003 to 07-31-2005
   Evaluation Studies of a Dengue-2 DNA Vaccine in Monkeys
   
   
2. S06-GM008224, 09-01-00 to 07-31-04
   Evaluation Studies of a Dengue-2 Envelope DNA Vaccine
   
   
3. Internal CPRC funding
   
   

Representative Publications

1. E.O'Neill, I.Martinez, F.Villinger, M.Rivera, S.Gascot, C.Colon, T.Arana, M.Sidhu, R.Stout, D.C.Montefiori, M.Martinez, A.A. Ansari, Z.R.Israel, E. Kraiselburd (2002). Protection by SIV VLP DNA prime/protein boost following mucosal SIV challenge is markedly enhanced by IL-12/GM-CSF co-administration. J Med Primatol, 31: 217-227.
   
   
2. I.Martínez, L.Giavedoni, and E.Kraiselburd (2001). Clone B7 Cells have a Single Copy of SIVsmB7 Integrated in Chromosome 20. Archives of Virology 146:1-7.
   
   
3. E.Kraiselburd, A.Salamán, M.Beltrán, M.Rivera, J.Oliver, M.Kessler, M.Knezevich, A.Rodriguez, M.Bilska, D.Montefiori and I.Martínez (1997). Vaccine evaluation studies of replication-defective SIVsmB7. Cell. and Mol. Biology, 43(7):915-924.