Ragon Institute faculty member Daniel Lingwood, PhD, was one of seven recipients of The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Avenir Award.

The Avenir Award supports early stage investigators who propose highly innovative studies. The scientists each receive up to $300,000 per year for five years to support their HIV/AIDS and genetics research.

“Our work centers on defining how viral sites of vulnerability can be ’naturally’ recognized by genetically encoded features of antibodies displayed by the responding B cells,” explained Dr. Lingwood. “The Avenir Award will now allow us to test a key application: whether this innate-like recognition can serve as a genetic template for HIV vaccine design. It is our hope that this approach will help accelerate vaccine discovery, and at the same time, provide specific benefit to individuals with substance abuse disorder where adherence to existing forms of therapy is disproportionately low.”