>> Back to all 2007 Headlines October 25, 2007 Center for Global Health Director Thomas C. Quinn, MD, is one of six Johns Hopkins University researchers who have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by their peers. Quinn, Jef Boeke, PhD, ScD, Paul D. Feldman, PhD, Nirbhay Kumar, PhD, Theresa A.B. Shapiro, MD, PhD, and David Valle, MD, are among 471 new fellows around the world. Election as a fellow honors their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Kumar and Shapiro are also affiliated with the Center for Global Health. This year’s fellows will be announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science on Oct. 26. New fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Feb. 16 from 8 to 10 a.m. at the Fellows Forum during the 2008 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston.  | |
As part of the section on biological sciences, Thomas C. Quinn was elected for significant contributions to the epidemiology of HIV and to international health, particularly for work relating to immunodiagnostics and molecular amplification assays for infectious agents. Quinn is associate director for international research and senior investigator in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is a professor of medicine and pathology and has adjunct appointments in international health, epidemiology and molecular microbiology and immunology in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2006 he became the inaugural director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, coordinating all international research at the allied medical institutions of Johns Hopkins University. He also directs the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine P3 HIV/AIDS Research Facility and the International STD/HIV Research Laboratory. Quinn's investigations have involved the study of the epidemiologic, virologic and immunologic features of HIV infection in Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Asia. In October 2004, Quinn was inducted into the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America and a member of the American Association of Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He is an advisor/consultant on HIV and STDs to the World Health Organization, Pan American Health Organization, UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He served on the board of directors for the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. He is a founding member of the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa and helped design the Infectious Diseases Institute of Makerere University School of Medicine in Uganda where he also holds an adjunct appointment in medicine. He is the recipient of multiple awards and honors and is an author of more than 700 publications on HIV, STDs and infectious diseases.  | |
As part of the section on medical sciences, Nirbhay Kumar was elected for distinguished contributions to the field of parasitology, particularly for studies of malaria parasite development and identification of proteins for a transmission-blocking vaccine. A professor in the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Kumar focuses on the parasitic disease that affects hundreds of millions of lives annually in the world and kills a child every 30 seconds. He and colleagues are working to develop a human malaria transmission-blocking vaccine, which would interfere with the development of sexual stages in mosquitoes and could significantly reduce malaria transmission. Several antigens have been identified as targets for the development of such a vaccine. Kumar also has employed targeted gene disruption to investigate molecular mechanisms involved in the differentiation and development of sexual stages of the parasite, which are crucial for malaria transmission. In other collaborative projects, Kumar is also looking at the interactions between malaria-helminths, detection of malaria by mass spectrometry and proteomic analysis of mosquito midgut and salivary glands. He has served as primary investigator of a Fogarty International Center-funded malaria research and training program since 2004. Kumar has published over 120 scientific papers, is a member of several national and international review committees, and is a member of the American Society for MicroBiology, the American Society of Parasitologists and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and serves as a member of the editorial boards of several scientific journals.  | |
As part of the section on medical sciences, Theresa A.B. Shapiro was elected for outstanding contributions to the field of parasitology, particularly elucidating the role of trypanosomal topoisomerases and development of therapeutic agents for trypanosomiasis and malaria. Shapiro is the Wellcome Professor and director of clinical pharmacology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her research spans the entire range of pharmacology, with a focus on much needed new therapies for parasitic infections. She is regarded as a leading expert on the DNA topoisomerases in African trypanosomes, having described several new enzymes in this class, defined their role in DNA metabolism, and demonstrated their essential nature and suitability as drug targets. Her longstanding collaboration with synthetic organic chemist Gary Posner has led to the identification of compounds that are curative after a single oral dose in mice and are now in scale-up synthesis for preclinical and clinical trials. She launched a successful new training program in which MD fellows conduct translational and hands-on clinical studies for their thesis research toward a PhD in clinical investigation. Shapiro is a member of the Association of American Physicians, is an associate editor of Pharmacological Reviews, has served on numerous NIH study sections, and is an expert consultant on antiparasitic drugs to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. More information about the other Hopkins AAAS Fellows can be found here. |
