Dr. Lbachir BenMohamed is an associate professor of immunology, the founder and the head of the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology at the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, UC Irvine School of Medicine. He also holds a joint appointment with the Center of Immunology at UC Irvine. He is an independent immunologist, with a strong expertise in vaccine development against both infectious diseases and cancer.
Recurrent ocular HSV-1 infection (herpes infection of the eye) is a major cause of viral induced blindness. The same herpes cold sores that appear near the mouth can also infect the eye?s cornea and cause blindness. Dr. BenMohamed and his team of research scientists are studying how to stimulate the immune system to protect the body from herpes virus infection and disease. They are attempting to develop a vaccine against the virus using state-of-the-art molecular immunology tools, which are biological procedures that favorably stimulate the immune responses in the body. They aim to use this knowledge to develop new vaccines or treatments to prevent or combat ocular and genital herpes infection and disease. In addition, his team has recently introduced a new line of research to study if vaccines can be developed to prevent tumors of the eye and other areas.
Dr. BenMohamed received his Ph.D. in Immunology from the Pasteur Institute, Paris, France in 1997. He has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct his research and is well known in the scientific community within both the United States and Europe.