Targeting HIV

Barton Haynes, Frederic M. Hanes Professor of medicine and immunology, has been selected to lead the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI), a consortium of universities and academic medical centers established in July by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The center's goal will be to solve major problems in HIV vaccine development and design.

CHAVI will receive $15 million in its first year and may receive a total of more than $300 million over seven years, according to NIAID, part of the National Institutes of Health (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 is aimed at helping to transform HIV research in the U.S. into a more cooperative and collaborative system.

NIAID 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.

The Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise was originally proposed by NIAID director Anthony Fauci, Haynes, Richard Klausner, executive director of the global health program for the Gates Foundation, and other prominent HIV vaccine researchers and public-health officials in a June 2003 commentary in Science magazine.

Haynes, who is director of the Human Vaccine Institute at Duke, has studied HIV for more than fifteen years. He is an internationally recognized leader in basic T- and B-cell immunology, retrovirus research, and HIV vaccine development.