WHO: Bruce D. Walker, MD, Director, Partners AIDS Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston
WHAT: 1999 Jonathan Lax Memorial Lecture, supported by Abbott Laboratories, Agouron Pharmaceuticals and Roche Laboratories, and presented by The Wistar Institute and Philadelphia FIGHT.
Dr. Walker's lecture is titled, "HIV Infection: Immune-Mediated Control."
WHEN: Wednesday, November 17, 1999
WHERE: 3:00 pm
The Joseph N. Grossman, MD Auditorium
The Wistar Institute
3601 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-4268
5:30- 9:00 pm
The Down Town Club
The Public Ledger Building, 11th Floor
150 South Independence Hall West
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Dr. Walker is a member of the American Association of Immunologists and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He is Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Elizabeth Glaser Foundation, Chair of the National Institutes of Health AIDS ARRA Study Section and a member of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group at Massachusetts General Hospital. He also serves as Associate Editor for several journals, including AIDS and Journal of Immunology, and as Editor of Immunology Section, Los Alamos HIV Data Base.
Among the scientific awards he has received are the NIH Merit Award, the AIDS Research Amsterdam Endowed Chair for AIDS Research and the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Research Scientist Award for Excellence in 'Bench to Bedside' Research. Dr. Walker was cited by the Duke Foundation for leading an outstanding clinical research program that applies the latest basic medical research advances to the prevention, treatment and cure of AIDS.
Jonathan Lax was a Philadelphia businessman, inventor, teacher, AIDS activist and former president of Philadelphia FIGHT, a community-based clinical research network. He died of AIDS in 1996.
The Lax Lecture highlights the Wistar/Philadelphia FIGHT Collaborative Project, a research partnership formed to combine basic immunotherapy with community based research. It allows a patient population of over 4,000 individuals living with HIV/AIDS to participate in and learn about research through planned educational seminars.
The Wistar Institute, established in 1892, was the first independent medical research facility in the country. For more than 100 years, Wistar scientists have been making history and improving world health through their development of vaccines for diseases that include rabies, German measles, infantile gastroenteritis (rotavirus), and cytomegalovirus; discovery of molecules like interleukin-12, which are helping the immune system fight bacteria, parasites, viruses and cancer; and location of genes that contribute to the development of diseases like breast, lung and prostate cancer. Wistar is a National Cancer Institute Cancer Center.