David Knipe
Founder

David M. Knipe is a Co-Founder of Replay. He is the Higgins Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, head of the Program in Virology, and program director for the Mechanisms of Viral Infectivity Training program at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Knipe received his PhD degree in cell biology from MIT in 1976 for his thesis research on vesicular stomatitis virus assembly with Drs. David Baltimore and Harvey Lodish. He did postdoctoral work on herpesvirus molecular genetics with Dr. Bernard Roizman at the University of Chicago. He serves as a member of the Harvard Medical School Center for AIDS Research executive committee, an editor for the journal Virology, and co-chief editor of Fields Virology, the leading virology reference book. He has received an American Cancer Society Faculty Research Award and an NIH MERIT Award, and he served as chair of the NIH Virology Study Section from 1998 to 2000. He is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology and the National Academy of Sciences and recipient of the 2017 HMS Division of Medical Sciences Distinguished Faculty Award.

Dr. Knipe’s laboratory investigates the molecular and cellular biology of herpes simplex virus infection during productive and latent infection and the host immune responses to viral infection. His work has defined the nuclear remodeling events that take place during productive infection that allow the virus to take over the host cell nucleus for replication. This research is now defining the mechanisms by which HSV blocks the innate immunity signaling pathways through modifications of the host cell. His research has developed a replication-defective HSV-2 mutant virus as a candidate genital herpes vaccine that was shown to be safe and immunogenic in phase I trials.