Anton Laboratory

Research group

• UCLA Center for HIV Prevention Research (UCLA CPR)
• UCLA AIDS Institute

Key investigator 

• Peter A. Anton, MD

Funding

• Federal grants: NIH, NIA, NIAID and NIDA
• Private individuals and foundations

Research projects

• Safety and efficacy of anti-HIV rectal and vaginal microbicides for HIV transmission prevention
• Efficiency and effectiveness of rectal enemas as delivery method of anti-HIV microbicides
• Use of intravaginal rings to deliver HIV antiretroviral medication
• Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent HIV transmission in men who have sex with men
• Minority men who have sex with men and substance use in relation to HIV transmission and treatment
• Assessments of increased immune-senescence in HIV infected individuals
• Nanomedicine approaches to target drug delivery
• Innate versus adaptive immune systems in highly-exposed sero-negative (HESN) population

Key publications

1. Anton PA, Poles MA, Elliott J, Mao SH, McGowan I, Lenz HJ, Chen IS. (2001). Sensitive and reproducible quantitation of mucosal HIV-1 RNA and DNA viral burden in patients with detectable and undetectable plasma viral HIV-1 RNA using endoscopic biopsies. J Virol Methods, 95(1-2) 65-79.
2. Shacklett BL, Yang O, Hausner MA, Elliott J, Hultin L, Price C, Fuerst M, Matud J, Hultin P, Cox C, Ibarrondo J, Wong JT, Nixon DF, Anton PA, Jamieson BD. (2003). Optimization of methods to assess human mucosal T-cell responses to HIV infection. J Immunol Methods, 279(1-2) 17-31.
3. McGowan I, Elliott J, Cortina G, Tanner K, Siboliban C, Adler A, Cho D, Boscardin WJ, Soto-Torres L, Anton PA. (2007). Characterization of baseline intestinal mucosal indices of injury and inflammation in men for use in rectal microbicide trials (HIV Prevention Trials Network-056). J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr, 46(4) 417-425.
4. Anton PA, Cranston RD, Kashuba A, Hendrix C, Bumpus NN, Richardson-Harman N, Elliott J, Janocko L, Khanukhova E, Dennis RA, Cumberland WG, Ju C, Carballo-Dieguez A, Mauck C, McGowan IM. (2012). RMP-02/MTN-006: A Phase 1 Rectal Safety, Acceptability, Pharmacokinetic and Pharmacodynamic Study of Tenofovir 1% Gel Compared to Oral Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate. AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses, 28(11) 1412-1421. PMCID: PMC3484811.
5. Yang, OO, Ibarrondo, FJ, Price, C, Hultin, LE, Elliott, J, Hultin, PM, Shih, R, Hausner, MA, Hwee, LN, Hoffman, J, Jamieson, BD, Anton, PA Differential blood and mucosal immune responses against an HIV-1 vaccine administered via inguinal or deltoid injection. PLOS One 2014; 9(2):e88621.
6. Gorbach, PM, Pines, H, Javanbakht, M, Weiss, RE, Jeffries, R, Cranston, RD, Fuchs, EJ, Hezareh, M, Brown, S, Voskanian, A, Anton, P Order of Orifices: Sequence of condom use and ejaculation by orifice during anal intercourse among women: implications for HIV transmission, JAIDS 2014 Dec 1;67(4):424-9. doi: 10.1097/QAI.0000000000000314.
7. Richardson-Harman, N, Hendrix, CW, Mauck, C, McGowan, I, Cranston, RD, Yang, K, Elliott, J, Tanner, K, Kashuba, A, Anton, PA Correlation between compartmental tenofovir concentrations and an ex vivo rectal biopsy model of tissue infectibilty in the RMP-02/MTN-006 Phase I study. PLoS ONE, 2014 9(10): e111507. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0111507.
8. McGowan, I, Anton, PA, Elliott, J, Cranston, RD, Duffill, K, Althouse, AD, Hawkins, KL, De Rosa, SC Exploring the feasibility of multi-site flow cytometric processing of gut associated lymphoid tissue with centralized data analysis for multi-site clinical trials. PLoS ONE 2015, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0126454.
9. McGowan I, Cranston RD, Duffill K, Siegel A, Engstrom JC, Nikiforov A, Jacobson C, Rehman KK, Elliott J, Khanukhova E, Abebe K, Mauck C, Spiegel HM, Dezzutti CS, Rohan LC, Marzinke MA, Hiruy H, Hendrix CW, Richardson-Harman N, Anton PA. A phase 1 randomized, open label, rectal safety, acceptability, harmacokinetic, and pharmacodynamic study of three formulations of Tenofovir 1% gel (the CHARM-01 Study). PLoS One. 2015;10(5):e0125363. PMCID:PMC4420274.

Past GI research fellows

• Weiwei Cao, MD
• Christopher Chang, MD, PhD
• Elmer Y. Chang, MD, PhD
• Terence Chiu, MD, PhD
• Daniel Cho, MD
• Jennifer Choi, MD
• Temitope Foster, MD, MS
• Theodore Kelesidis, MD
• Jonathan Lin, MD
• Adrian Lunn, MD, PhD
• Michael A. Poles, MD
• Leo Treyzon, MD, MS

Bio

Dr. Anton is a professor of medicine within the UCLA Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute. He was founding director of the UCLA Center for HIV Prevention Research (CPR), which operated from 2003-2018, and director of the UCLA Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Mucosal Immunology Core Laboratory, which operated from 1987-2018. He also served as past co-director of the Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease at UCLA.

Dr. Anton graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1977 and received his MD from Case Western Reserve University in 1983. He did fellowship work at the Cholera Hospital, ICDDR, in Bangladesh in 1983 and a year fellowship in pathology in 1981 in Cleveland’s Institute of Pathology. He performed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston Massachusetts. Dr. Anton began in his work at UCLA in 1986 with a gastroenterology fellowship and has been on faculty since 1989.

Dr. Anton’s research focuses on the degree of mucosal inflammation and altered co-receptor expression associated with HIV infection and associated therapeutic interventions, the potential use of the mucosa as a route of HIV immunization with various HIV vaccine candidates as well as microbicides for HIV mucosal prevention, investigating the interaction of HSV and HIV in mucosal pathogenesis and efforts to clarify the role of compartments in HIV pathogenesis.

He has been PI on over 30 clinical trials including two Phase I HIV vaccine trials and two Phase I anti-HIV topical microbicide trials. He recently completed research as PI of the NIH IPCP U19 award “Microbicide Development Program” (MDP), with national/international sub-study sites, focusing on a developmental pipeline for rectal microbicides. These rectal microbicide efforts have continued with both the Clinical Trials Project within the second IPCP U19 Combination HIV Antiretroviral Rectal Microbicide (CHARM) which has six exploratory pre-Phase I microbicide trials and JHU’s DREAM project. His research has expanded into delayed-release vaginal drug delivery and IM/injectable drug delivery with Oak Crest Institute of Sciences’ U19 and Northwestern University’s UM1 SLAP-HIV.

Dr. Anton is active in several NIH-sponsored national HIV networks including the AIDS Clinical Trial Group (ACTG), HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), HIV Clinical Pharmacology Quality Assurance Program Advisory Board (CPQA AB), HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), HIV/AIDS Network Coordination (HANC), the Microbicide Trials Network (MTN) and the HVTN Mucosal Immunology Focus Group (HVTN MIG).