Date: August 21, 2012 By:
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded 14 grants totaling $7.8 million in first-year funding for basic research to identify new approaches for designing a safe and effective HIV vaccine. The grants were awarded under the Innovation for HIV Vaccine Discovery (IHVD) initiative, which is expected to receive up to $34.8 million over the next four years.
“Recent discoveries about the basic biology of HIV and how the virus adapts to its host have provided useful information and new opportunities to guide vaccine development,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “These grants are designed to build on that information and stimulate discovery of new ways to design a robust vaccine that prevents acquisition and establishment of latent infection.”
Ragon Institute Investigator Dr. Galit Alter was one of 14 recipients of this NIAID grant.
View full list of awardees (via NIAID)
Researchers at the Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT, and Harvard have uncovered critical insights into how aging impairs the immune system’s ability to fight cancer.
This study, published in Immunity on August 30, used a non-human primate model to demonstrate that previous Mtb infection leads to a durable, protective immune response that is dependent on CD4+ T cells.
MIT researchers find that the first dose primes the immune system, helping it to generate a strong response to the second dose, a week later.