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Federal research funding sparks economic growth

July 12, 2010

A recent report from The Science Coalition gives numerous examples of how federally funded research at universities has led to innovation, new companies, and the creation of jobs. The Sparking Economic Growth report lists the university research origins of 100 companies, including Google, Genentech, Cisco Systems and iRobot. Four Emory startup companies were highlighted among the success stories: GeoVax, Inc., Pharmasset, Inc., Syntermed, Inc., and Triangle Pharmaceuticals, which was later acquired by Gilead Sciences in California.

Emory President James Wagner wrote a followup editorial in the Atlanta Business Chronicle about the importance of scientific research in Georgia’s universities to the health of our economy.

“Atlanta can be proud that Emory University is a shining example in this report, with four highlighted successful companies that were launched because federally funded research resulted in innovative and life-saving discoveries. These four success stories only scratch the surface as examples of the more than 150 companies and the resulting 5,500 jobs created in Georgia from discoveries at its research universities.

“Since the 1990s, Emory has turned external research funding, the majority from the federal government, into more than $775 million in licensing revenues from drugs, diagnostics, devices and consumer products. This is money infused into the state’s economy that helps create jobs and educational opportunities, saves lives, and leads to more research discoveries for the benefit of all. Emory has launched 47 start-up companies and licensed 27 drugs, medical devices and diagnostics already in the marketplace and 12 more currently in human trials.”

GeoVax, Inc., is developing and testing a promising AIDS vaccine based on research at the Emory Vaccine Center and Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Gilead Sciences (from Triangle Pharmaceuticals) and Pharmasset, Inc. are creating AIDS drugs that are taken by over 90 percent of HIV-infected patients in the United States and many more around the world. Syntermed, Inc. distributes imaging software developed at Emory that helps in the diagnosis of more than four million heart disease patients every year.

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A storied look at HIV/AIDS in Africa

March 3, 2010

At a recent Emory global health seminar series, Kate Winskell showed how fiction penned by young Africans can help inform the response to HIV and AIDS. Since 1997, more than 145,000 young Africans have participated in scriptwriting contests as part of Scenarios from Africa HIV communication process.

The resulting archive of stories is a unique source of cross-cultural and longitudinal data on social representations of HIV and AIDS. The archive now spans 47 countries and a critical 12-year period in the history of the epidemic. Winskell’s presentation analyzed the stories that were part of the 2005 Scenarios contest. Six African countries were represented.

The seed for Scenarios was planted more than a decade ago–before the rise of the Internet—when Winskell, a public health educator, and her husband, Daniel Enger, were searching for innovative ways to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. The old ways of trying to stop the spread of the disease, focusing only on medical aspects of the epidemic or relying on educational materials that were not culturally adapted, were clearly limited.


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Community groups play key role in increasing HIV research participation

February 4, 2010

Paula Frew, PhD, MPH

Although African Americans make up a significant share of HIV cases in the U.S., they are underrepresented in HIV clinical trials. New research shows that promotion of HIV clinical trials and participation by African Americans can be increased by coalitions that link community organizations to clinical-research institutions.

“Community organizations already have built trusting relationships in their communities,” says Paula Frew, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Emory School of Medicine. “If HIV/AIDS prevention and HIV clinical research become part of the agendas of these organizations, they can become ideal allies for increasing participation by community members who are at risk for disease.”

Frew was lead investigator in a study published recently in the Journal Prevention Science. She is director of health communications & applied research at the Hope Clinic of the Emory Vaccine Center and an investigator in the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR).


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World AIDS Day reminds of research priorities

December 1, 2009

AIDS quilt panels_shadowsEmory University is hosting an 800-panel display of The AIDS Memorial Quilt in recognition of World AIDS Day. “Quilt on the Quad,” on the Emory quadrangle, is the largest collegiate display and the second largest in the world today. An opening ceremony featured a talk by Sandra Thurman, president and CEO of the International AIDS Trust, based at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health. Members of the Emory community read the names of each individual memorialized by a quilt panel on the quad.

An estimated 60 million people have acquired HIV, and 25 million people have died from AIDS. Emory scientists and physicians have been leaders in research to develop effective drugs and vaccines against HIV and AIDS. The Emory Center for AIDS Research is an official National Institutes of Health CFAR site. More than 120 faculty throughout Emory are working on some aspect of HIV/AIDS prevention or treatment.

More than 94 percent of HIV patients in the U.S. on life saving antiviral therapy take a drug developed at Emory. And many of the scientists within the Emory Vaccine Center are focused on finding an effective vaccine against HIV. A vaccine developed at the Vaccine Center and Yerkes National Primate Research Center is being tested nationally in a phase II clinical trial.

The Hope Clinic of the Emory Vaccine Center is conducting several clinical trials of HIV vaccine candidates through the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) sponsored by the NIH. The HVTN 505 vaccine trial, which is currently enrolling at the Hope Clinic and 13 other cities around the country, is a test-of-concept efficacy trial for an NIH vaccine (DNA + Adnovirus – gag/pol/nef/EnvABC).

Mark Mulligan, MD, executive director of Emory’s Hope Clinic, emphasizes that on World AIDS Day there would be no better way to honor those who have already died or are already infected than to produce a vaccine that will protect their families and friends.

“The recent analysis of the RV144 Thai trial surprisingly taught us that an envelope glycoprotein vaccine regimen can protect (albeit modestly, thus far)! This is an amazing result that has re-ignited the field, and is capturing the attention of the community. We must do all we can to leverage this result for success,” Mulligan says. “Albert Sabin said that no scientist can rest while a vaccine that might help humanity sits on the shelf. To me, this underscores the importance of successfully executing the HVTN 505 trial.”

hkorschun 1 December 2009 News, Research , , , , , , No Comments

Curiosity about health and a borderless world

October 23, 2009

Developing effective HIV prevention and intervention programs in the most affected communities is a challenge globally as well as locally. It’s also a challenge that Emory infectious disease specialist Carlos del Rio, MD, is addressing as newly appointed chair of the Rollins School of Public Health’s Hubert Department of Global Health.

Carlos del Rio, MD

Carlos del Rio, MD

Del Rio is uniquely equipped to address HIV prevention and intervention. As the former chief of medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta’s safety-net hospital, he witnessed firsthand patients affected by the disease. He says there ought to be incentives for people to stay healthy instead of barriers to staying healthy.

More daunting for del Rio is preventing disease on a global scale, much of which rests on changing unhealthy behaviors related to diet, exercise, smoking, and sex. He says we know very little about how to implement population-wide behavior change, and we need to learn more.

Del Rio says growing human capital to strengthen research capacity in resource-constrained countries is also key. Since 1998, the NIH/Fogarty International Center has funded the Emory AIDS Training and Research Program (AITRP) to build capacity in Armenia, the Republic of Georgia, Ethiopia, Mexico, Rwanda, Vietnam and Zambia. Led by del Rio, AITRP brings a select group of young scientists to Emory each year for advanced training. Emory faculty also train and mentor scientists in these countries.

The training program has opened avenues to improving health. In Ethiopia, del Rio helped expand HIV testing among the police force and bring antiretroviral therapy into the community for people living with HIV.

In the Republic of Georgia, the Emory AITRP and the Emory-Georgia Tuberculosis Research Training Program, another NIH/Fogarty program led by RSPH adjunct faculty member and Emory School of Medicine professor  Henry Blumberg, MD, has helped build research capacity in HIV, hepatitis, and tuberculosis research.

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Paris “Hands Over” to Atlanta for AIDS Vaccine 2010

October 22, 2009

Eric Hunter, PhD

Eric Hunter, PhD

As the AIDS Vaccine 2009 conference concluded today in Paris with more than 1,000 scientists in attendance, Eric Hunter, PhD, co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, accepted the “hand over” for next year’s international conference in Atlanta.

The Emory CFAR will serve as local Atlanta host of AIDS Vaccine 2010, which takes place next Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, led by the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise. The conference will bring scientists, community advocates, funders and policy makers from around the world to Atlanta to hear cutting edge scientific results, exchange new ideas, educate future leaders and engage a diverse group of scientists in the quest for an AIDS vaccine.

A number of Emory scientists were in attendance in Paris at AIDS Vaccine 2009. Hunter was interviewed by several news organizations, including the Lehrer News Hour and Science magazine, about the results of a recently concluded AIDS vaccine trial conducted by the United States and Thailand. The complete results of the trial were released at the meeting and also published online this week by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Hunter was among 22 scientists who initially had criticized the trial in a 2004 Science editorial. After seeing the full results and analysis of the trial this week, Hunter commented from the Paris meeting:

“The complete data from the trial indicate that it was modestly effective in preventing HIV-1 infection. However, it will likely be difficult to establish the mechanism by which the vaccine protected participants and additional studies will be needed. This positive result, though, gives a much needed boost to efforts aimed at developing an HIV-1 vaccine and takes the field from the position of perhaps an impossible goal to a possible goal.”

Hunter will chair AIDS Vaccine 2010 in Atlanta, along with co-chairs James Curran, MD, MPH, dean, Rollins School of Public Health; Carlos del Rio, MD, Hubert professor and chair of the Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health; and Harriet Robinson, PhD, senior vice president of research and development, GeoVax and emeritus professor of microbiology and immunology, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University.

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Emory HIV/AIDS experts lends voice to reach out

September 30, 2009

The latest CDC statistics on HIV/AIDS estimate more than 1.1 million persons in the United States are living with diagnosed or undiagnosed HIV/AIDS. HIV gradually attacks the immune system and causes AIDS, the final stage of HIV infection.

It can take years for a person infected with HIV to reach this stage. Having AIDS means that the virus has weakened the immune system to the point at which the body has a difficult time fighting infection. Early HIV diagnosis is vital, so people who are infected can fully benefit from available live-saving treatments.

David Malebranche, MD

David J. Malebranche, MD

This critical message is the foundation of a new campaign titled “Treatment is Power.” David J. Malebranche, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and internist at Grady Memorial Hospital is an expert voice for the campaign by Gilead Sciences. Listen to Malebranche on a public service announcement (MP3).

Malebranche says opportunity is unique in reaching people living with HIV. It is geared toward reducing the stigma and fear associated with taking medications that slow down the virus and helps individuals realize the many quality of life improvements associated with early treatment.

As a nationally recognized speaker and advocate, the idea that “treatment is power” is not a new theme for Malebranche. Fostering a close working doctor-patient relationship is one Malebranche aggressively promotes at the Ponce Infectious Disease Center – a local AIDS clinic in downtown Atlanta, where he delivers comprehensive care to uninsured patients living with HIV/AIDS.

He says early treatment is an essential part of the fight against HIV.

From 2006-2008, Malebranche served on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, which provides recommendations to the President and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regarding national and international HIV/AIDS programs and policies. He conducts research exploring the social, structural and cultural factors influencing sexual risk-taking and HIV testing practices among black men.

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Reality check for HIV vaccine design

September 22, 2009

HIV doesn’t have a brain and it doesn’t strategize.

But the way that the virus mutates and evades the immune system in the early part of an infection, you might think it did.

Emory Vaccine Center researcher Cynthia Derdeyn and her colleagues have a new paper in PLOS Pathogens that is a reality check for researchers designing possible HIV vaccines. The results come from a collaboration with the Rwanda Zambia HIV Research Group. (Although the patients in this paper are from Zambia only.)

Red and green depict the parts of the HIV envelope protein that mutated in two patients (185F and 205F) in response to pressure from their immune systems. The rest of the envelope protein is blue.

Red and green depict the parts of the HIV envelope protein that mutated in two patients (185F and 205F) in response to pressure from their immune systems.

Recently there has been some excitement over the discovery of robust neutralizing antibodies in patients.

The bottom line, according to Derdeyn’s team: even if a vaccine succeeds in stimulating antibodies that can neutralize HIV, the virus is still going to mutate furiously and may escape those antibodies. To resist HIV, someone’s immune system may need to have several types of antibodies ready to go, their results suggest.

A companion paper in the same issue of PLOS Pathogens from South African scientists has similarly bracing results.

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