Four HMS Faculty Share Leadership in $300 Million NIH Center for HIV Vaccine Research

Four HMS faculty members will serve in leadership roles within the new Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI), a consortium of universities and academic medical centers established by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The center’s goal is to solve major problems in HIV vaccine development and design.

CHAVI will receive $15 million in its first year and may receive more than $300 million in the next seven years, according to the NIH. CHAVI’s mission is to address major obstacles to HIV vaccine development and to design, develop, and test novel HIV vaccine candidates. The award leads HIV research in the United States toward a cooperative and
collaborative organization.

Barton Haynes, a professor at Duke University Medical Center, will head the initiative while two of the four senior scientific leadership positions will be filled by Norman Letvin, HMS professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Joseph Sodroski, HMS professor of pathology at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. They will direct CHAVI research in their own labs and may also form research partnerships between CHAVI and other academic and industrial labs around the world.

Three of the five research cores will be led by Stephen Harrison, HMS professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology and of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston; Raphael Dolin, HMS dean for academic and clinical programs and the Maxwell Finland professor of medicine (microbiology and genetics); and Letvin. Harrison will lead the Structural Biology Core; Dolin, the Clinical Core; and Letvin, the Vaccine Production Core.

NIAID, part of the National Institutes of Health, established CHAVI in response to recommendations of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, a virtual consortium endorsed by world leaders at a G-8 summit in June 2004.

CHAVI researchers will focus on solving several unanswered questions about HIV, including how it infects the body in its earliest stages; designing, developing, and testing improved vaccines; and evaluating promising HIV vaccine candidates in small-scale clinical trials. CHAVI will also fund a large-scale study to determine how the immune system of the macaque fends off SIV, the simian equivalent of HIV.

CHAVI will be a “virtual consortium” consisting of a collaborative group of scientists at multiple sites—research centers, universities, and companies—around the world. In future years, it may also solicit and support high-priority new ideas and discovery efforts from the research community.

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