Dr. Barton Haynes of Duke University Medical Center will lead the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI), a new consortium of universities and medical centers that will address major obstacles to HIV vaccine development and will design, develop, and test novel HIV vaccine candidates. CHAVI will receive $15 million its first year and may receive more than $300 million total over seven years, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

The center will be a "virtual consortium," a collaborative group of scientists at multiple sites: research centers, universities, and companies around the world. NIAID established the center in response to recommendations of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise.

Some researchers worry that funding for CHAVI could deprive small laboratories of NIH funding through traditional routes, according to Mario Stevenson, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Worcester who studies HIV's molecular structure. However, the initial $15 million for the consortium represents a new infusion of funding from NIH through NIAID, said Haynes, a professor of medicine and director of the Human Vaccine Institute at Duke. Some of the funding allocated over ensuing years will be used to bring in researchers not included initially, Haynes said.

CHAVI will have five core research areas led by professor David Goldstein, director of the Center for Population Genomics and Pharmacogenetics at Duke's Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy; Drs. Norman Letvin and Joseph Sodroski of Harvard Medical School; Dr. George Shaw of the University of Alabama-Birmingham School of Medicine; and Dr. Andrew McMichael of Britain's Oxford University.

Back to other news for July 19, 2005

Search the Newsroom archive