Amanda M. Brown

Amanda Brown is an American immunologist and microbiologist as well as an associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Brown is notable for cloning one of the first recombinant HIV viruses and developing a novel method to visualize HIV infected cells using GFP fluorescence.

As a principal investigator at Johns Hopkins, Brown studies HIV in the central nervous system, focusing on the cellular role of osteopontin in regulating inflammatory signalling pathways in HIV infected macrophages. Brown also explores how microglia and macrophages serve as latent viral reservoirs in order to target these mechanisms to prevent HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder. In addition to her research, Brown mentors and recruits the future cohort of diverse leaders in STEM, serving as director of the Johns Hopkins Neuroscience Scholars Program, and for 10 years serving as program director for the Department of Neurology Johns Hopkins Internship in Brain Sciences Program for Baltimore City High School Students.

Early life and education Brown pursued her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Riverside in 1985. She majored in Biochemistry and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1989. She studied under the mentorship of William R. Jacobs.

Brown helped to develop a novel method to study the mechanisms underlying mycobacterium replication in mononuclear phagocytes. Brown and her colleagues developed a leucine auxotrophic mutant that the field could use to study the host-pathogen interactions of mycobacterium and the animal cells thy replicate in. SecA1 they found to be essential, but SecA2 they found to be nonessential but conserved across mycobacteria suggesting its alternate and unknown roles in pathogenesis and mycobacterium physiology. Brown also used this fluorescent tool to discover that HLA-A2 is down-regulated in HIV infected macrophages. Further, Brown was the first to model the HIV-macrophage reservoir using her fluorescent tagging tool, and this method continues to be used today to study latent HIV infection.

From 1999 to 2003, Brown completed a second postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. As the principal investigator of the Brown Laboratory Research Group, Brown explores how HIV infection persists in macrophages and how the chronic inflammatory response, as a result of infection, leads to neuronal damage and neurodegeneration. Brown is also the co-director of the Developmental Core for the NIMH Johns Hopkins Center for Novel Therapeutics for HIV-Associated Cognitive Disorders. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown was elected a member of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Pandemic Academic Advisory Committee.

Education and outreach leadership Brown also serves as a director of the Hopkins NeuroHIV-Comorbidities Scholars program and also Directs the Translational Research in Neuro-AIDS and Mental Health program at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Brown secured an R25 grant from the National Institutes of Health to run this program which educates research across the United States and internationally about the effects of HIV infection in racial and ethnic minority populations.

Brown was also the director of the Johns Hopkins Internship in Brain Sciences (JHIBS) Program, also supported by the NIH R25 grant that Brown obtained. The JHIBS program recruits underrepresented minority high school students in the Baltimore area to experience research as a paid intern for 8 weeks at JHSOM. Over 150 high school students have participated in the program throughout Brown's leadership tenure and the students have an 84% matriculation rate into college. This national program focused on mentoring underrepresented and deaf or hard-of-hearing undergraduates to obtain career development and research exposure in neuroscience.

Osteopontin signalling in HIV infection of the central nervous system Brown focuses her research program on studying the role of osteopontin in HIV pathogenesis in the central nervous system. Osteopontin is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that is secreted by the two main cells in the brain that HIV infects, namely T cells and macrophages. Brown found, in 2011, that osteopontin enhances HIV replication and is overall increased in the brains of HIV infected individuals. Further exploring its mechanisms of action, Brown discovered in 2020 that osteopontin may exert protective functions in the CNS through interacting with components of the extracellular matrix to active downstream protective signalling.

Awards and honors 2018 Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Living the Hopkins Mission Honor 2014 Johns Hopkins Diversity Leadership Award