Congratulations to Ben Winer, who on July 1st defended his thesis titled “Determinants of hepatitis B and delta viral host tropism and pathogenesis!” Ben (now DOCTOR Winer!) graduates with over ten publications to his name, and the distinct honor of being the first student to complete a Ph.D. from the Ploss Lab.
During his time in the Ploss Lab, Ben pioneered the establishment of new mouse and primary hepatocyte models for HBV and HDV infection, mentored four undergraduate and visiting students, and frequently entertained his labmates by dancing as he walked down the long hallway in LTL. We are so proud of Ben, who will be starting a post-doc at UCSF in the Jason Cyster and Orion Weiner labs in September!!
A selected list of Ben’s publications from the Ploss lab:
- Winer BY, Gaska JM, Lipkowitz G, et al. Analysis of host responses to hepatitis B and delta viral infections in a micro-scalable hepatic co-culture system. Hepatology. 2019;
- Winer BY, Shirvani-dastgerdi E, Bram Y, et al. Preclinical assessment of antiviral combination therapy in a genetically humanized mouse model for hepatitis delta virus infection. Sci Transl Med. 2018;10(447)
- Winer BY, Huang TS, Pludwinski E, et al. Long-term hepatitis B infection in a scalable hepatic co-culture system. Nat Commun. 2017;8(1):125.
- Winer BY, Huang T, Low BE, et al. Recapitulation of treatment response patterns in a novel humanized mouse model for chronic hepatitis B virus infection. Virology. 2017;502:63-72.
- Winer BY, Ding Q, Gaska JM, Ploss A. In vivo models of hepatitis B and C virus infection. FEBS Lett. 2016;590(13):1987-99.
- Winer BY, Ploss A. Breaking the species barrier for hepatitis delta virus. Hepatology. 2016;63(1):334-6.
- Winer BY, Ploss A. Determinants of hepatitis B and delta virus host tropism. Curr Opin Virol. 2015;13:109-16.