Leor Weinberger

Leor Weinberger
Born1975
Toronto, Canada
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley (PhD)
Princeton University (Lewis Thomas Fellow)
Known forviral latency programs, Therapeutic Interfering Particles (TIPs), stochastic fluctuations/bet-hedging
AwardsPew Scholar
Sloan Fellow
Blavatnik Fellow
Keck awardee
TED speaker
NIH Director's Pioneer Award
NIH Director's New Innovator Award
NIH Avant-Garde Award for HIV Research
Scientific career
FieldsVirology, Synthetic Biology
InstitutionsUniversity of California, San Francisco
Gladstone Institutes

Leor S. Weinberger is an American virologist and quantitative biologist. He is credited with discovering the HIV virus latency circuit, which provided the first experimental evidence that stochastic fluctuations ('noise') in gene expression are used for cell fate decisions.[1][2] He has also pioneered the concept of therapeutic interfering particles, or “TIPs”, which are resistance-proof antivirals.[3] His TED talk[4] on this novel antiviral approach 20 years in the making has been called a "highlight" [5] of TED and received a standing ovation from the live audience.

Weinberger is currently the William and Ute Bowes Distinguished Professor of Virology, director of the Gladstone Center for Cell Circuitry, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, and professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Gladstone Institutes/University of California, San Francisco[6] He is the only person to ever win the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, NIH/NIDA Avant Garde Award, and NIH Director's New Innovator Award.[7][8][9]

  1. ^ Weinberger, Leor (July 29, 2005). "Stochastic Gene Expression in a Lentiviral Positive- Feedback Loop: HIV-1 Tat Fluctuations Drive Phenotypic Diversity". Cell. 122 (2): 169–82. arXiv:q-bio/0608002. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2005.06.006. PMID 16051143. S2CID 8061716.
  2. ^ Howard Hughes Medical Institute, July 29, 2005. http://www.hhmi.org/news/random-gene-expression-may-drive-hiv-hiding
  3. ^ Mosher, Dave. "Piggyback Virus Could Curb HIV Pandemic". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2023-08-11.
  4. ^ Weinberger, Leor (26 October 2020), Can we create vaccines that mutate and spread?, retrieved 2020-12-01
  5. ^ "In the time of COVID-19, TEDMED still thrills". 12 March 2020.
  6. ^ "[email protected]". gladstone.org. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference :6 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference :7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference :8 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).