Sastry Laboratory

The overall goal of research in the Sastry lab is to develop procedures and reagents for prediction, treatment, and prevention of HPV-associated cancers and HIV-induced AIDS. Some of the laboratory’s most notable findings are the identification and patenting of HPV-16 E6/E7 peptides, for which women disease-free after treatment for HPV-CIN exhibited T cell immunity and the design of effective mucosal vaccination strategies to deliver them. Continuing work in this area seeks to combine peptide vaccination with other immune therapies such as 4-1BB agonists and CTLA-4 blockade to eradicate HPV-derived cancers. Researchers in the Sastry lab developed a synthetic peptide-cocktail vaccine based on highly conserved sequences within the envelope protein of HIV-1 that proved effective against AIDS development and, in collaboration studies, demonstrated that recombinant adenoviral constructs expressing the peptide cocktail as well as full-length HIV envelope induce protective immunity against mucosal viral challenge, the most prevalent route of HIV transmission worldwide.