Carole A. Heilman, Ph.D., Director, DMID
Dr. Carole Heilman, Director of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID), chaired the September 27, 2004 NAAID Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Subcommittee meeting. In her opening remarks, Dr. Heilman introduced ad hoc member Dr. Richard Whitley of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who later provided the subcommittee with an overview of the Institute’s recent drug summit. She then referred to the DMID branch chiefs to introduce new staff members who have joined the different DMID offices and branches since the last Subcommittee meeting.
Dr. Heilman provided a brief update on several new initiatives under way that continue to advance DMID’s genomics research efforts, which include 8 recently-awarded Bioinformatics Resource Centers, 7 new Proteomics Research Programs, as well as a Trans-NIH Influenza Genomics Project.
Dr. Heilman also updated the Subcommittee on DMID’s biodefense research program and reported that NIAID had released several new initiatives under the new authorities granted by the BioShield legislation, which aims to expedite the development of new countermeasures against CDC Category A agents. These new NIAID initiatives include one devoted to the development of new therapeutics for CDC Category A Agents, one focused on protecting the immune system against radiation, one intended to assist in the development of Botulinum Toxin monoclonal antibodies (serotype A) for clinical evaluation, and one designed to assist in the development of a Recombinant Botulinum Toxin vaccine (serotype E) for clinical evaluation.
Dr. Heilman presented the Subcommittee with an update on the Institute’s West Nile Virus studies. She noted that enrollment has been slow, but that screening remains active. As of September 22, 24 patients were enrolled in the WNV treatment study and 6 enrolled in the Natural History Study. Patients have been enrolled from a wide variety of locations, including California, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, and Texas. The outbreak is expected to continue in the Southwest and California until late October. Last year, enrollment continued into early November and it is expected to do so again this year.
Following a brief report on recent and upcoming scientific meetings, Dr. Heilman informed the Subcommittee of NIAID’s recent Summit on the State of Anti-Infectives, which was designed to help NIAID determine potential roles and future opportunities to optimize its contribution to the anti-infective development process. This meeting was a follow-up to a similar meeting NIAID held in 2000; however, this meeting was conducted within the larger context of biodefense. In that regard, Dr. Heilman reported that many of our biodefense activities are yielding broad benefits that spillover to any number of emerging diseases. However, the decrease in industrial interest and the critical issue of antimicrobial resistance continues to elevate the need for new anti-infectives. She then invited Dr. Whitley to share his views of the summit with the Subcommittee.
Dr. Richard Whitley provided a comprehensive overview of the Summit, summarizing key components of the agenda and sharing a number of slides presented by key NIAID staff participating in the Summit, including NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, Deputy Director Dr. John La Montagne, and DMID Director Dr. Carole Heilman. He discussed progress NIAID has made since the first summit in 2000 in terms of developing new targets and new compounds that would not have normally been developed by industry, and briefly noted a number of different research activities NIAID has initiated in recent years to further progress in this area. In summary, he reported on several key suggestions and actions that came forward from the summit, including encouragement for NIAID to further facilitate industry, academia, private-partner sector and government interactions to expand models to support translational research.
Following Dr. Whitley’s presentation, a number of concepts were presented for clearance, including:
Drug Development for Anti-Infectives – Dr. John Rogers of the Parasitology and International Programs Branch presented this initiative, which will support and accelerate development of antimicrobials by providing preclinical drug development resources to the scientific community and industry partners. The Subcommittee unanimously approved the concept.
Cooperative Partnerships for Biodefense – Dr. Michael Schaefer of the Bacteriology and Mycology Branch presented this initiative, which is designed to support discovery/design and development of vaccines, therapeutics, adjuvants and diagnostics for biodefense. The Subcommittee approved this initiative.
Pandemic Preparedness in Asia – Dr. Linda Lambert of the Respiratory Diseases Branch presented this initiative, which will continue to support the surveillance and characterization of influenza viruses in Asia, natural history studies to understand the emergence of influenza viruses with pandemic potential, construction of suitable viruses for use in vaccine development, and the generation of reagents. It was approved by the Subcommittee.
Pathogen Functional Genomics Resource Center – Dr. Giovanni presented this initiative, which would continue to provide and distribute to the research community a wide range of genomic, proteomic and related research resources and technologies for the functional analysis of microbial pathogens and invertebrate vectors of infectious diseases. In addition, this renewal will expand activities to encourage systematic and comprehensive protein signature discovery and analysis that will lead to the identification of clinically useful pathogen and host protein biomarkers. It was also unanimously approved by the Subcommittee.
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