Media Releases >  Media Releases Archive  > National chair appointment benefits vaccine research

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Contact:
Jamie Scott, 604-291-5658/5656 (lab), jkscott@sfu.ca
David MacLean, dmaclean@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, Media & PR, 604.291.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca

The appointment of Jamie Scott as a Canada Research Chair in molecular immunity will help Simon Fraser University’s newest faculty launch a master’s program in population and public health. Scott’s appointment is the first of four Canada Research Chairs to be filled in SFU’s faculty of health sciences.

Scott, a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, and a biomedical researcher at SFU, is trying to develop a vaccine against HIV-1, the AIDS virus. Scott’s senior Canada Research Chair, worth $200,000 annually from the federal government for a renewable seven-year term, will help her solve two key riddles. Typically, HIV-1 continually mutates to avoid annihilation by antibodies trying to latch on to it. Four human antibodies have been found that can target and neutralize many different HIV-1 variants, rendering them non-infectious. Scott is using the antibodies to figure out which proteins in a giant library, which she has created, will bind the antibodies to stable vulnerable sites on HIV-1. Scott’s second major challenge is identifying antibodies with fewer mutations than the four currently known to kill HIV-1. The fewer the mutations the easier it will be for Scott to develop a vaccine.

Thanks to a $750,000 Canada Foundation for Innovation infrastructure grant, accompanying her national chair, Scott is acquiring equipment to hasten her identification of less mutated antibodies in HIV-1-infected people and vaccinated animals.

"It is fitting that our first chair appointment is in vaccine research," says David MacLean, a co-architect of SFU’s faculty of health sciences and a former medical health officer. "Media stories about infectious diseases, such as AIDS, SARS and Avian flu are daily reminders of the importance of vaccine research in halting their spread."

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Websites:
Canada Research Chair: www.chairs.gc.ca/
Jamie Scott: www.sfu.ca/mbb/mbb/faculty/scott/scott.html
Canada foundation for innovation: www.innovation.ca/index.cfm