University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · BiochemistrySwanstrom Lab
Ronald I Swanstrom · Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Research Focus
Dr. Ronald Swanstrom's lab at UNC Chapel Hill focuses on understanding how HIV evolves and interacts with both the host immune system and antiviral treatments. They study different strains of HIV, particularly the subtype C variant prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, to assess drug resistance and improve treatment outcomes. The research combines advanced machine learning techniques with biological assays to monitor viral changes and latency in the brain and other tissues.
HIV evolutiondrug resistancemachine learningviral latencyanti-retroviral therapyHIV subtype Cmolecular epidemiologymacrophage tropismCNS reservoirs
Research Aims
5AIM 01Investigate how HIV-1 evolves within the body during infection
AIM 02Explore drug resistance mutations in HIV-1 using machine learning
AIM 03Study the relationship between HIV-1 evolution and antiviral treatment outcomes
AIM 04Examine HIV latency and the emergence of macrophage-tropic variants in the CNS
AIM 05Identify cellular reservoirs of HIV-1 in the brain of individuals with subtype C infections.
Skills the Lab Values
DNA sequencingviral culture techniquesdata analysis with Pythonmachine learning modelingcell sortingquantitative assaysreal-time PCRtissue analysisbioinformatics
Output against the department
Publications319top 19% of dept.77th of 402
this lab
most publishedleast published
Citations20ktop 20% of dept.82nd of 402
this lab
most citedleast cited
Career totals from OpenAlex, compared against labs that share a department. A department spans everything from one paper to tens of thousands, so bar heights are on a log scale — otherwise the largest lab would flatten every other bar to a line.