Ya-Chi Ho, MD, PhD

Dr. Ho takes molecular virology, immunology, and single-cell and genomics approaches to examine HIV persistence and HIV-induced immune dysfunction. Using clinical samples from HIV-infected individuals, the Ho lab investigates host-HIV interactions with particular interests in HIV-host RNA landscape (using single-cell RNAseq), CD4 T cell expansion dynamics, HIV-host genome interactions, and HIV-specific silencing, and immune escape mechanisms. Dr. Ho was a board-certified infectious disease attending physician in Taiwan. She received her PhD (2013) and postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Dr. Robert F. Siliciano's lab. She developed the first near-full-length single genome HIV proviral profiling (Cell 2013), identified defective HIV proviruses as a source of chronic immune activation in virally suppressed HIV-infected individuals (Cell Host Microbe 2017), and identified HIV-driven aberrant cancer gene expression as a mechanism of HIV persistence (Science Translational Medicine 2020). The Ho lab has active collaborations with physicians, immunologists, computer scientists, and HIV investigators both within Yale and in NIH-funded multi-center collaborations.