"So my name is Trish Burto. I'm a research associate professor here at Boston College
in the biology department. My focus is to look at monocytes and macrophages which are
main cells and how they are involved in HIV infection.
I grew up in Massachusetts. We were a very athletic family so we would always go out
hiking and sports and all that stuff so we kind of got into science and did the science
fairs and I was always interested in those kind of things. Because for the research you
can, you have a problem, you can, you think about the problem, you hypothesize what you
think is happening and then you contest it and you can figure out different things and
I knew I was smart enough to go to do something after college so I went to Penn State College
of Medicine and I got my PhD in cell and molecular biology and then I ended up back in Boston,
here at Boston college.
So HIV, a lot of people think nowadays that it's very controlled so you can take drugs
and then you're all set basically. But nowadays they have peripheral neuropathy which affects
the hands and feet. Numbness and tingling. Even though they're pretty healthy otherwise,
HIV people have a lot of cardiac disease. So that's what we study as monocytes, macrophages
in these HIV related diseases. All those people who are living longer since they are on therapy,
now the HIV population is more aged so they're getting other diseases that normally affect
your aging.
So we've been doing clinical trials. We get human specimens so blood and then we measure
all these different cytokines or immune markers in there. So I think that's really exciting.
There's a whole literature that these drugs, they're used in the common population but
they might be a little different in the HIV population. So we're trying to look at mechanisms
of the disease.
We've discovered that this molecule, soluble CD 163 can be a potential biomarker for HIV,
cardiac disease and for HIV neurologic disease. If this molecule is really elevated in one
person, then you know that they're potentially getting more sick. I think that's always a
goal in basic research is you kind of want your research to then be applicable to the
patients or human disease or something that will help mankind. We're not, the kind of
lab that is looking for a cure but we're looking for this is the mechanism of how these cells
work or how this stuff happens and then next like how do we stop that.
It's all about collaboration as well so we work with a group at MGH who does the clinical
trials and we do kind of the basic research and we look at monocytes and macrophages and
then there's another group that does brain imaging or cardiac imaging and kind off all
these pieces come together.
A lot of the basic findings that we have found in our lab and in others, then they take those
and use them as the basis for certain clinical trials so they're saying all right well we
want to find a mechanism or find some drug that can then decrease this I want to say
activation.
How do you balance being a a mother and being a wife and being a scientist and being responsible
for people's graduate degrees, and anyone can do any of those things if you kind of
set your heart to it and are really focused and you really enjoy what you do and I would
say that I definitely love what I do."