May 15, 2025

Postdoctoral Scholar-Fellow Dr. Jillian Neary receives 2025 CFAR New Investigator Award

Congratulations to Dr. Jillian Neary, Postdoctoral Scholar-Fellow with Global WACh, for receiving a 2025 UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) New Investigator Award!  The two-year award focuses on supporting early career investigators to conduct independent HIV research and apply for future funding to continue their HIV/AIDS research careers.

Dr. Neary’s past work focused on strategies to increase pediatric HIV testing and improve HIV care for adolescents with HIV. Recently, her work focused on molecular epidemiology including HIV viral control among children with HIV and biomarkers of biological aging among children who were exposed to HIV in utero.

With support from the new award, she plans to explore whether breastfeeding and human milk oligosaccharide composition are associated with child telomere length (TL) among children in Kenya who were exposed to HIV in utero. The evidence fills an important need to further understand how breastfeeding may influence short- and long-term health outcomes.

Children who were HIV exposed and uninfected (CHEU) are more likely to experience growth faltering, neurodevelopmental delays, diarrhea, and respiratory infections compared to children who were HIV unexposed and uninfected (CHUU). CHEU are also at higher risk of inflammation and oxidative stress compared to CHUU, and telomeres shorten with cell replication, inflammation, and oxidative stress. Shorter TL is associated with increased susceptibility to infection, cardiovascular disease, aging/frailty, and all-cause mortality. The first two years of life are a time of increased telomere attrition compared to later in life, and childhood TL is correlated with TL in adulthood. TL in childhood could influence child susceptibility to infections, neurodevelopment, and TL later in life which is associated with important health outcomes. Understanding the influence of child feeding on TL can inform strategies to improve child health, specifically among CHEU.

Dr. Neary will work with a diverse team of mentors in the U.S. and Kenya. Project mentors include Drs. Christine McGrath (UW), Dan T. A. Eisenberg (UW), Grace John-Stewart (UW), Dalton Wamalwa (University of Nairobi), and Lars Bode (University of California San Diego). Project collaborators include Drs. Benson Singa (Kenya Medical Research Institute), Irene Njuguna (Kenyatta National Hospital/UW), Tiffany Pan (UW), and Michael Wu (UW).

We look forward to learning more about the project outcomes in 2027.