Welcome to The Guzzo Lab

A viral immunology laboratory focused on host-pathogen interactions and HIV infection.

Statement of Solidarity

Our lab is committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences are valued and respected. We believe that research progress and innovation thrives when researchers from all walks of life contribute their unique insights to address scientific challenges.

While we alone cannot resolve all the systemic inequities in academia and campus communities, we commit to ensuring an inclusive education and training experience in our lab. We are dedicated to increasing access to opportunities for students of diverse backgrounds and those underrepresented in academia and research—including racialized students, women, and individuals living with visible or invisible disabilities. By increasing applications from interested students and supporting them as they progress through their training, we aim to build a more equitable and supportive academic ecosystem. We appreciate that a diverse team, combined with an equitable and inclusive work environment, results in creative and innovative achievements that benefit all of us as a community.

Areas of Research

Dedicated studies to further our understanding of host-pathogen interactions.

Human Proteins Incorporated into the HIV-1 Envelope

The incorporation of host proteins into the HIV envelope is a result of the budding mechanism of viral egress in which HIV acquires its lipid envelope directly from the host cell plasma membrane. Virion-incorporated human proteins can decorate the surface of viral particles, and in some cases, these proteins can extend significantly farther out from the virus surface than the viral gp120 spike, depending on extracellular domain (ECD) length. Thus, host proteins could be better therapeutic targets than gp120 on the surface of virions, as they are more accessible and have been reported to be more abundant than gp120 using semi-quantitative methods. Furthermore, research in our lab has shown that host proteins on virion surfaces can significantly impact virus biology, including altering virus attachment, infectivity, and homing. Thus, our research is geared towards a better understanding of the protein landscape on virion surfaces and how this impacts HIV-1 infection and disease.

Novel Cytokine Expression Patterns

It has been well established that cytokines have extraordinary potential as ‘immunological multi-taskers’. These small molecular weight proteins can be expressed via a variety of stimuli, in a multitude of cell types throughout the body, and can elicit a broad range of responses. Key features of cytokines, such as glycosylation and positioning of charged domains, can drastically influence biological functions, protein stability, protein-protein interactions (oligomerization), and receptor engagement.

Interestingly, some cytokines can even be stored at high concentrations, preformed inside producer cells, awaiting rapid release without requiring de novo synthesis, resulting in high-speed immune responses. While much work is centered on downstream functions of cytokines, we seek to understand earlier events in the expression, secretion, and interplay among these proteins, in an effort to establish how cytokines are regulated in a normal-functioning immune system, before disease disrupts the equilibrium.