News Article -- August 16, 2007

DVC Hosts Guest Lecture on Chimeric Sindbis-based Alphavirus Vaccines

Today DynPort Vaccine Company hosted the fifth presentation in its ongoing scientific lecture series. Scott Weaver, PhD, presented on several topics to an audience of about 40 scientists and technical personnel.

Dr. Weaver spoke on development of Chimeric Sindbis-based Alphavirus Vaccines at the seminar. Traditional vaccines developed to protect humans and equines at risk from infection with virulent alphaviruses such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEEV) have consisted of live attenuated or killed virus preparations. An alternative approach to the development of alphavirus vaccines is to create a chimeric virus that contains the replicative machinery from another alphavirus, Sindbis virus, and the structural genes from VEEV. Dr. Weaver's presentation covered proof-of-concept studies with chimeric viruses developed as countermeasures for Eastern, Western and Venezuelan equine encephalitis.

About Dr. Collins
Scott Weaver, PhD, is the Edgar and Mary Frances Monteith Distinguished Professor in Viral Genetics in the Departments of Pathology and of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). He also serves as Director for Tropical and Emerging Infectious Diseases, and Associate Director of the Center for Tropical Diseases.

Dr. Weaver’s interests in tropical diseases began in college with mosquito surveillance work in Maryland and undergraduate research on mosquito ecology. He earned an MS degree in Entomology at Cornell University in 1982 working on Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) virus-mosquito interactions with Drs. Ed Cupp and William Scherer, and conducted field research on VEE in Colombia with Robert Dickerman and Hernando Groot. He completed his PhD at the University of California, San Diego in 1993, working with John Holland on RNA virus evolution.

About the Series
The DVC Scientific Seminar Series is presented by DVC’s Science Department.