Dr. Warner C. Greene

Director, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology
Nick and Sue Hellmann Distinguished Professor of Translational Medicine
Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology
Co-Director, UCSF-GIVI Center for AIDS Research
University of California, San Francisco

President, Accordia Global Health Foundation

Dr. Warner C. Greene is the director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology (GIVI), a research center dedicated to fundamental studies of modern virology and immunology with a focus on HIV and AIDS. He is also president of the Accordia Global Health Foundation, whose mission is to overcome the burden of infectious diseases by building healthcare capacity and strengthening academic medical institutions in Africa.

A physician-scientist, Dr. Greene is the author of more than 330 scientific papers and has been recognized as one of the 100 Most Cited Scientists in the world. Dr. Greene is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and a councilor of the American Association of Physicians. He also serves as co-director of the UCSF-GIVI Center for AIDS Research. In 2007, Dr. Greene was appointed president of the Accordia Global Health Foundation.

Dr. Greene’s laboratory has performed studies deciphering the mechanisms of action of the HIV nef, vif, and vpr gene products. His laboratory has also delineated how the NF-κB transcription factor is regulated by stimulus-coupled degradation of IκBα in the cytoplasm and by acetylation and phosphorylation in the nucleus. Dr. Greene’s laboratory has investigated how the normal function of the NF-κB/Rel transcription factors are subverted by the HIV and HTLV-1 retroviruses including recent studies showing how sustained induction of NF-κB is required for activation of latent HIV proviruses. Dr. Greene’s laboratory was the first to show how HIV Vif thwarts the antiviral action of APOBEC3G cytidine deaminase by inducing its degradation in the 26S proteasome and by decreasing its synthesis. Further his laboratory identified endogenous SINE/Alu retroelements as natural targets of human APOBEC3G. Most recently, Dr. Greene’s laboratory has shown how abortive HIV infection triggers the progressive depletion of CD4 T cells. Dr. Greene has served as a research mentor to more than 120 undergraduate and graduate students, and post-doctoral scholars during his 30+ year career in science. He currently mentors 3 graduate students, 1 MSTP student, 5 research associates, and 6 postdoctoral fellows.

Dr. Greene completed a BA from Stanford University and an MD/PhD from Washington University School of Medicine, and took his internship and residency training in Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard. After serving as a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute and a professor of medicine and Howard Hughes Investigator at Duke University Medical Center, Dr. Greene accepted his current founding director position in 1991 and was also appointed a professor of medicine, microbiology, and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco.