Dr. MacPherson is a the director of the Clinical Investigator Program in the Department of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. He is also an associate professor in the Department of Medicine and Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Immunology at the University of Ottawa, and acts as a clinician scientist in the Chronic Diseases Program at The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He is also a staff physician at the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Ottawa Hospital.
He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of New Brunswick, obtaining first class honours. He then received a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991 and his medical degree from McMaster in 1998. He later completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Toronto and subspecialty training in infectious diseases at the University of Ottawa.
Dr. MacPherson’s research interest is in infectious diseases, with a focus on HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. He is particularly interested in how HIV disables the immune system. He currently directs a basic science laboratory which looks at the role of interleukin-7 in HIV infection.
Dr. MacPherson is the principal investigator for CTNPT 011, which is investigating, firstly, whether higher concentrations of penicillin during treatment for syphilis will improve outcomes, and secondly, the extent to which the standard treatment of syphilis is affected by HIV co-infection. He has contributed to a CTN research publication on the implications of syphilis and HIV co-infection, among others.
