Fighting Deadly Viruses
We’re speeding the discovery of treatments and a cure for deadly viruses.
Advancing Discoveries
Curt I. Civin, MD,
Professor and Associate Dean for Research Director, University of Maryland Center for Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine
As part of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) is the first center in the United States – and perhaps the world – to combine basic research, epidemiology, and clinical research in a concerted effort to speed the discovery of diagnostics and therapeutics for a wide variety of chronic and deadly viral and immune disorders, including HIV, the Hepatitis C and herpes viruses, and cancer.
Your support will facilitate the cutting-edge initiatives underway at IHV, such as the work of Robert Gallo, MD (pictured left), Professor and Director of the Institute of Human Virology. Dr. Gallo, who is credited with discovering that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause of AIDS, is currently focused on the development of an effective HIV preventive vaccine and the development of innovative HIV therapies.
Among their accomplishments, IHV scientists created a transgenic rat whose DNA incorporates genes of HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. This groundbreaking discovery, the first of its kind, provides a new way to study mechanisms of the development of AIDS and to test vaccines.
This means that your children or grandchildren – or anyone else’s, for that matter -- could soon receive a single vaccination, conceived in a laboratory at the School of Medicine, funded by you, which may provide lifetime protection against a broad range of HIV strains. Imagine that!