Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, to lead a Consortium for AIDS Vaccine Research in Nonhuman Primates. The five-year grant totals $36 million.
BIDMC Chief of Vaccine Research Dan H. Barouch, MD, PhD, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, will co-lead the new consortium with R. Paul Johnson, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at HMS and the New England Primate Research Center (NEPRC).
"The goal of the consortium is to elucidate the earliest immunologic and pathologic events at mucosal surfaces following virus infection, and to determine the ability of multiple leading vaccine candidates to block or to attenuate these events," says Barouch, whose laboratory focuses on the immunology and virology of the HIV-1 infection and the development of novel vaccine strategies.