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Purdue's Center for Global Research and Intervention in Infectious Diseases, an affiliate of Discovery Park's Bindley Bioscience Center hosted a symposium highlighting advancements and collaborations in vaccine research on October 8th.  Known as c-GRIID, the center is researching comprehensive intervention strategies to control and reduce the incidence and severity of infectious diseases in humans and animals worldwide.

Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, delivered the keynote address on Vaccine Development: Apologia, Vaccinomics, & Tantalus Revisited.  As director of Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, Poland leads a research team that investigates issues surrounding vaccine response and novel vaccines important to public health. He also serves as Mayo Clinic's Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, director of the Immunization Clinic, and director of the Program in Translational Immunovirology.

Poland, who also is editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine, was awarded the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence in December 2008, the Hsu prize in International Infectious Disease Epidemiology in 2007 by the University of Iowa, and the Charles Merieux Lifetime Achievement Award in Vaccinology from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases in May 2006.

In 2004, he was named the Mary Lowell Leary Professor in Medicine, the highest academic distinction for a faculty member at Mayo Clinic. Poland received his medical degree from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Ill., and completed his residency and advanced post-graduate work at the University of Minnesota/Abbott-Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

Other experts from Notre Dame University, Indiana University and Purdue spoke.   Purdue physical pharmacy professor Stanley Hem, on the physical chemistry and biology of aluminum-containing adjuvants; IU School of Medicine infectious disease professor Darron Brown, on the Human Papilloma Virus Vaccine; and Notre Dame biology professor Mary Ann McDowell, on malaria and vaccine development.  IU distinguished chemistry professor Peter Ortoleva, on computer-aided design of anti-viral vaccines; Purdue comparative pathobiology professor Suresh Mittal, on recombinant adenovirus vaccine against pandemic influenza; and Notre Dame biology professor Jeffrey Schorey, on exosomes as novel vaccines and diagnostic markers for tuberculosis.

To view speakers PowerPoint presentation click on the URL listed below.