Purdue symposium will focus on state's vaccine research efforts
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University will host a symposium highlighting advancements and collaborations in vaccine research from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday (Oct. 8) in Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, Room 121.
Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, will speak from 9-10 a.m. about vaccines for biodefense and influenza. Other experts from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University and Purdue are scheduled to speak. A poster session highlighting vaccine research also is planned.
The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. For more information, go to http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/C-GRIID/fall09symposium.php
Speakers for the morning session are 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.
The afternoon session includes talks by IU distinguished chemistry professor Peter Ortoleva on computer-aided design of antiviral 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.
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 and completed his residency and advanced postgraduate work at the University of Minnesota/Abbott-Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.
Organizing the symposium is Purdue's Center for Global Research and Intervention in Infectious Diseases, an affiliate of Discovery Park's Bindley Bioscience Center. Known as C-GRID, the center is researching comprehensive intervention strategies to control and reduce the incidence and severity of infectious diseases in humans and animals worldwide.
Writer: Phillip Fiorini, 765-496-3133, pfiorini@purdue.edu
Sources: Charles Buck, 765-494-2208, cbuck@purdue.edu
Luanne Ludwig, 765-494-2276, lml@purdue.edu