Dr. Wagner’s research is focused on pediatric HIV, which accounts for 10% of all HIV deaths. One of the primary interests of his lab is understanding chronic HIV infection during antiretroviral therapy. Specifically, why doesn’t antiretroviral therapy eradicate HIV infection? Is there ongoing viral replication? Is there proliferation of cells with viable proviral HIV? Can we identify the remaining infected cells? This research compliments Dr. Wagner’s other primary research interest, which is engineering new treatment strategies more likely to cure HIV. Currently Dr. Wagner is developing anti-HIV chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, which are also resistant to HIV, as a potential strategy to cure HIV. The lab is currently optimizing this approach in vitro and testing CAR T cell sin small and large animal models.