September 26, 2003

World’s Elite Aids Researchers In Baltimore

BALTIMORE, Md—More than 500 of the world’s leading AIDS researchers will convene next week for the Annual International Meeting of the Institute of Human Virology, to be held Sept. 29-Oct. 3 at the Marriott Baltimore Waterfront Hotel, 700 Aliceanna St.

The IHV’s Annual International Meeting was designed as a venue where basic and clinical researchers can discuss the latest scientific advances, including often still unpublished data. Though the scientific presentations are off the record to the media, a press luncheon is scheduled Wednesday to discuss the latest in HIV vaccine development, therapeutic advances and global efforts to address the AIDS epidemic, today the deadliest pandemic in medical history with more than 20 million fatalities worldwide.

The field of prominent AIDS researchers, clinicians and activists attending and available to take questions from the media on Wednesday will include:
• Bahige Baroudy, Director, Antiviral Therapy, Schering-Plough Research Institute
• William Blattner, Director, Division of Epidemiology and Prevention, IHV
• Martin Delaney, Founder, San Francisco-based Project Inform
• Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS, founder and director of the IHV
• Staffan Hildebrand, videographer and producer of the FACE of AIDS, a 16-year documentary of the epidemic to officially debut in Bangkok in July 2004
• Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS and president of UNESCO
• John Moore, Weill Medical College, Cornell University
• Robert Redfield, M.D., Director, Division of Clinical Care and Patient Research, IHV
• Robert Siliciano, Johns Hopkins University, Graduate Program in Immunology

Also attending and/or presenting throughout the week will be Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH’s National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Hilary Koprowski, who pioneered vaccines for polio and rabies and currently researches the use of plants such as tobacco and spinach for vaccine delivery; and Drs. Abdulsalami Nasidi and Babatunde Osotimehin, health officials from Nigeria who will address the epidemic in Africa, HIV vaccine preparedness and the national response to the pandemic.

2003 ANNUAL MEETING HIGHLIGHTS

Highlights of the 2003 Annual Meeting will include an open floor discussion Monday night on the challenges of global access to antiretroviral therapy, a presentation Tuesday night of
the 2003 Institute of Human Virology Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Jan Svoboda, Director of the Institute of Molecular Genetics, Academy of the Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague; as well as a press luncheon on Wednesday, all at the Marriott Baltimore Waterfront Hotel.

To request interviews or to attend an event, call Gwen Newman at 410-706-4616.

“This is the latest in a series of colloquia known originally as "Bob Gallo's Annual Lab Meeting," remarks Maurice Hilleman, Director of the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research. “The meeting,” he adds, “has long served as a global clearinghouse for thought and conjecture in infectious diseases and cancer, heralded by all and eagerly attended by many. It continues in the tradition of quality science with quality review.”

The IHV’s annual meeting was first founded three decades ago by Dr. Gallo when he headed the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology at NIH’s National Cancer Institute. Today, Gallo directs the Institute of Human Virology, which is a center of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and is affiliated with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and University of Maryland Medical Center. The annual meeting has been held in Baltimore since 1996 when the IHV opened as a first-of-its-kind center combining the disciplines of research, patient care and epidemiology.

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Contact at IHV:
Gwen Fariss Newman
410.706.4616
newmang@umbi.umd.edu

The University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute was mandated by the state of Maryland legislature in 1985 as "a new paradigm of state economic development in biotech-related sciences." With five major research and education centers across Maryland, UMBI is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of biotechnology. The centers are the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology in Rockville; Center for Biosystems Research in College Park; and Center of Marine Biotechnology, Medical Biotechnology Center, and the Institute of Human Virology, all in Baltimore.