Principal Investigator/Training Grant Director: Richard Reichman
The goal of this proposed training program in Viral diseases, Vaccines, and Biodefense (WB) is to provide high quality training to outstanding applicants who will pursue investigative careers in these critical areas. The WB Program is unique and demanding, designed to integrate training in viral diseases and vaccines, with particular concern for their relationship to biodefense. The Program educates students in both virology and immunology and brings basic and clinical scientists closer together to facilitate the conduct of translational research.The current training program has a long tradition of postdoctoral education in infectious diseases and immunology, primarily for individuals with MD degrees. The newly designed WB Program takes advantage of continuing strengths in viral diseases and vaccines, coupled with the recent and dramatic expansion in vaccine immunobiology research at Rochester to add a pre-doctoral component to the Program and more PhD recipients to its postdoctoral fellowship program.
The pre-doctoral component builds upon a highly successful graduate program in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and utilizes the resources of a well-established, interdepartmental graduate training environment. In addition to course work required by the Virology or Immunology tracks within the Department, WB students are required to take the reciprocal basic course work in immunology or virology. Postdoctoral fellows are required to have similar training; all VVB trainees also take a course in basic epidemiology.
Twenty two primary trainers have principal responsibility for the bulk of the training, and have broad expertise in a variety of areas relevant to the VVB Program, including molecular biology of viruses, viral pathogenesis, clinical trials including evaluation of new vaccines, viral agents of bioterrorism, vaccine development, evolution of immunity, autoimmunity, B-cell biology, T-cell biology, and assay development for assessment of cellular immune responses. Sixteen resource faculty add expertise in epidemiology, biostatistics, access to patient populations for clinical studies, pharmacokinetics, animal models, and microbial pathogenesis. The integrity of the WB Program is maintained by the WB Meeting, a weekly exercise with mandatory attendance that includes trainee presentations, a journal club, and an outside speakers program. The VVB Meetings bring together all program faculty and trainees on a regular and frequent basis and provides a forum for exposure to new ideas and the development of new collaborations.