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| September 24, 2007 |
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IN THIS ISSUE:
Research and healthcare partnership receives $31 million NIH grant | GRA helps recruit renowned experts from Boston University, NIH | Emory receives $16 million in NIH grants | GRA sparks new collaboration with research grants | GeoVax Labs accelerates clinical trials | What if you threw a party and everybody came? |
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Accelerating Innovation |
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Research and healthcare partnership receives $31 million NIH grant
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded more than $31 million to a partnership of Atlanta academic, research and healthcare institutions focused on accelerating the translation of laboratory discoveries into healthcare innovations for patients. The grant is one of the largest NIH has ever awarded in Georgia.
The partnership, named the Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute (ACTSI), is led by Emory University, along with Morehouse School of Medicine, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
The primary partner institutions, along with major collaborators, will match the NIH award in additional financial commitments, space, personnel and other support. Georgia collaborators include the Georgia Research Alliance, Kaiser Permanente of Georgia, the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Georgia Bio, and Grady Memorial Hospital and Health Center.
“This grant will bolster our research efforts and produce real solutions to improve the health of Georgia's citizens,” said Governor Sonny Perdue. “This announcement is another step along Georgia's path to becoming a leader in healthcare research. Georgia is a center for innovation and collaboration, and we will continue to seek out opportunities to capitalize on Georgia's resources and talent.”
The award is part of a new national clinical research consortium launched last year by the NIH and supported through Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs). Part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, the consortium is designed to transform clinical and translational research in the United States so that new treatments can be developed more efficiently and delivered more quickly to patients.
When fully implemented in 2012, some 60 institutions will be linked in the nationwide consortium. back to top
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GRA helps recruit renowned experts from Boston University, NIH
Two new GRA Eminent Scholars have been recruited to Georgia as part of the Next-Generation Vaccines and Therapeutics Initiative.
Joe Z. Tsien, Ph.D., will become the leader of the Brain and Behavior Discovery Institute and GRA Eminent Scholar in systems neurobiology at the Medical College of Georgia. A leading neuroscientist and innovator in the fields of memory, cognition and systems neurobiology, Dr. Tsien comes from Boston University, where he was Professor and Director of Systems Neurobiology. He will bring with him an 18-member research team.
Among the array of intellectual property that Dr. Tsien has developed is an herbal library of more than 600,000 compounds, allowing rapid screening to pinpoint therapeutic agents with neurological, behavioral and immune modulatory therapeutic potential.
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Allan D. Kirk, M.D., Ph.D., has joined the Emory University School of Medicine as scientific director of the Emory Transplant Center and GRA Eminent Scholar in transplant immunology. Dr. Kirk was chief of the Transplantation Branch of the NIH National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, where he founded the NIH Intramural Organ Transplant Program.
An internationally acclaimed surgical scientist and authority on transplant immunology, Dr. Kirk has conducted groundbreaking translational research to achieve immune tolerance of organ and tissue transplants without the use of toxic immunosuppressant drugs. Dr. Kirk will also serve as a kidney/pancreas transplant surgeon for Emory University Hospital and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. back to top
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Emory receives $16 million in NIH grants
Recent NIH awards have spotlighted Emory University as a national leader in the development and translation of HIV/AIDS vaccines, drugs and behavioral interventions.
In August, NIH awarded a $9 million, five-year grant to the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) that includes renewal of Emory’s designation as one of only 18 CFAR sites in the U.S.
Earlier in the year, NIH designated Emory University’s HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Unit as a primary site nationally in both the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) and the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN). The ACTG is the nation’s premier NIH-funded clinical trials network for HIV/AIDS treatment trials, and the HVTN is the premier network for HIV vaccine prevention trials.
In support of the Clinical Trials Unit, Emory expects to receive $7 million over seven years from the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. back to top
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GRA sparks new collaboration with research grants
The Georgia Research Alliance has completed its first round of Collaboration Planning Grants awards, a key component of the Next-Generation Vaccines and Therapeutics Initiative.
The grants promote joint university-based research and commercialization projects that have the potential to lead to significant non-state R&D funding. More than $1 million in grants went to 11 research project teams, which are collaborations of researchers at the University of Georgia, Emory University, Medical College of Georgia, Georgia State University and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Funded projects focus on a wide range of disease targets, including cancer, autoimmune diseases, transplantation, and an array of infectious diseases. Projects also focus on the development of novel platform technologies related to diagnostics, adjuvants, vectors and vaccine delivery. back to top
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GeoVax Labs accelerates clinical trials
Atlanta-based GeoVax Labs, Inc. has announced an early start of two new HIV/AIDS vaccine clinical trials — the third and fourth in a four-trial series intended to evaluate both the human safety and immune responses of GeoVax’s HIV/AIDS vaccines.
The company’s DNA and MVA vaccines are designed to prevent AIDS in humans caused by the HIV-1 virus by vaccinating individuals prior to infection with the virus. The first and second trials in 2006 demonstrated excellent vaccine safety and positive anti-HIV-1 immune responses in the majority of recipients. Those findings led to the acceleration of the final two trials, which will vary both the number of doses and construct of the vaccines. For more information, visit the GeoVax Web site. back to top
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What if you threw a party and everybody came?
With GRA joining the Emory Vaccine Center and the Emory Center for AIDS Research as a sponsor, the Vaccine Dinner Club (VDC) kicked off its 10th year September 5 with a presentation on developing rabies vaccines, delivered by Charles Rupprecht, VMD, PhD, of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The VDC was created in 1998 after an AIDS interest group of investigators from Emory, UGA and the CDC were brainstorming community outreach events. The idea of a seminar for vaccine scientists was floated, and Dr. Kimberly Hagen from the Emory Center for AIDS Research was tapped to plan and organize it.
After e-mailing practically everyone she knew – and asking the recipients to share news of the seminar to their colleagues – Dr. Hagen succeeded in attracting more than 350 charter members to hear the inaugural presentation by Dr. Rafi Ahmed: “Thanks for the Memories: Immunologic Memory and Protective Immunity to Virus Infections; Understanding Their Relationship." (She had initially reserved a room for 40!)
The Vaccine Dinner club currently has more than 1,500 members from Emory University, the CDC, the University of Georgia, the Carter Center, Morehouse University, Mercer University, Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, the Georgia Research Alliance, several local high schools, the state of Georgia, community-based research organizations, charitable foundations, and private industry. Meetings are held the first Wednesday of every month during the academic year and are free and open to the public. For more information, see the VDC Web site. To join the club or reserve a place at the next meeting e-mail Dr. Hagen. back to top
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