Bringing research to the forefront

After medical school, Dr. Maria L. Alcaide left her native Spain to visit Miami.

But she was not coming for vacation.

At the height of the HIV epidemic, Alcaide spent a month observing University of Miami physicians treat critically ill patients at a time when the disease was still a death sentence.

Alcaide was so moved by the compassionate care, while also being intrigued by the scientific challenge of unraveling HIV, that she never left.

“I was able to work with an incredible team of doctors that were taking care of these patients day and night, but who were also involved in clinical trials testing new antiretroviral drugs,” she said. “I was part of those teams and participated on clinical trials as a special immunology fellow.”

Now as a leading physician researcher at the Miller School of Medicine, Alcaide is still working on discovering the innerworkings of the virus and uncovering new insights about people living with HIV.

“It was while seeing patients that I realized the importance of doing research, so I could connect them with developing therapeutics and really understand what is happening with their disease in the lab,” said Alcaide, now a tenured professor in the division of infectious disease, with appointments in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology as well as in the Department of Public Health Sciences. “I also saw how my clinical experiences could have a bigger impact while doing research on diseases like HIV.”

She now juggles patient care with a variety of clinical research studies, while never losing sight of her goal—to improve the health of people suffering from infectious diseases as quickly as possible.

Because of her ability to accomplish these weighty tasks, Alcaide earlier this year was appointed as the University’s interim vice provost for research and scholarship. In this role, Alcaide oversees the institution’s massive research enterprise and help stimulate collaborations, innovation, and excellence in research across the University.

Faculty are invited to meet with Alcaide and Guillermo “Willy” Prado, interim executive vice president and provost, during an information session that will be held from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday at the Frost Institute for Chemistry and Molecular Science seminar room.

“Maria is an accomplished physician and scholar with extensive administrative experience and a passion for mentoring. Taken together, these qualities make her an exceptional fit to drive key initiatives and advance our research mission as vice provost.”

While she is now one of the top medical scholars at the Miller School, Alcaide grew up in Madrid, Spain, curious about science and medicine in particular.

Her father was a biochemist who worked in academic settings, and later worked for pharmaceutical companies on anti-inflammatory medications. Her mother was a French professor. Alcaide attended college and medical school at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

During medical school, Alcaide did a summer internship in the United States and got some research experience at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Although her role often kept her in the lab, Alcaide said she was also able to see patients in the hospital with a mentor physician, and this piqued her interest in clinical research.

“We were looking at the development of resistance medications for HIV, and that got me interested in infectious diseases, and in particular, with HIV,” she said.

After medical school, Alcaide wanted to return to America and hoped to work with a diverse population of patients, so she reached out to Dr. Gordon Dickinson at the University of Miami, who was the chief of the infectious disease division. After a month of observing University physicians, Alcaide decided to do her residency at the Miller School, and stayed on for a one-year special immunology fellowship in Miami.

From her experience in Miami, Alcaide decided she wanted to become a physician scientist and study HIV, along with other diseases. She joined the Miller School faculty and began working at Jackson Memorial Hospital, as well as in its sexually transmitted diseases clinic.  

“I realized there was a disconnect about what is happening in this community, and what we see in the hospital with HIV patients once the disease has progressed, so I wanted to work on researching prevention of infection as well as progression of the disease,” she said.

Soon, Alcaide applied for and won an early career grant from the NIH to study people living with HIV in Zambia. Working with her University colleagues, psychologists Deborah Jones and Steve Weiss in Africa, Alcaide saw that interventions to prevent HIV infection rates from increasing went far beyond medications.

“It helped me realize that we need to impact behavior to really make a difference in the community,” she said. “And I learned that a lot of what I had done in Zambia could also be applicable in Miami.”

Alcaide began to shift her interaction with patients to be more holistic and recognized the myriad factors that could be impacting people to hinder them from taking HIV medications, which is still a struggle for many in South Florida.

As she continued to work in a region known for the highest rate of HIV infections in the United States, Alcaide began to study what kinds of people often get HIV, and focused on women, since they comprise some of the highest rates of infection worldwide. She discovered that women who have a condition called bacterial vaginosis are more susceptible to HIV and worked on interventions to decrease vaginosis.

In 2011, Alcaide and professor Mario Stevenson, one of the University’s top HIV researchers, opened a clinical research unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital for people living with HIV. Supported by grants from the Florida Department of Health, the clinic still helps to treat people living with HIV, but also fuels new research to one day find a cure.  

“We have been able to reach farther in terms of our research activities, and we get a lot of requests for research studies from federal agencies because of this unit,” Stevenson said. “Much of our major research funding wouldn’t have been possible without this facility, and it is key to having a robust system for enrolling people with HIV in research studies.”

Together, Stevenson and Alcaide have conducted studies to learn more about men and women living with HIV and have discovered that, even with medications, these people live 6 to 7 years less than the average person, said Stevenson, who also co-directs the Miami Center for AIDS Research. Alcaide is also looking at people living with HIV who have had COVID-19, as well as pregnant women with HIV to understand the impacts of the virus.

Beyond her HIV research, Alcaide also participated in some of the first clinical trials on the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. She is now exploring long COVID-19 to understand how 20 to 30 percent of people who had the virus are unable to overcome some of these symptoms for two months or longer.

Being able to effectively toggle between all of these complex projects, yet still lead teams, see patients, and stay positive is part of Alcaide’s nature, Stevenson said.

“As a clinical faculty member, the path to promotion is not easy, but Maria has found time to carve out research projects, get them funded, and thrive in that environment,” Stevenson said. “Also, from a mentoring standpoint, she sets an example of what is possible for our junior clinical investigators.”

In her role, Alcaide hopes to foster research collaborations between faculty members across the University in areas where it has clear expertise like mental health, cardiovascular disease, metabolism, cancer, and neuroscience, to name a few.  She also wants to encourage more mentoring programs across the three campuses for students, graduate students, and postdoctoral candidates.

“Because I had such great mentors, I realized the importance of mentorship, so I want to make sure we are doing this across the University to bring more young people to the research field,” she said.