Contacts:
Sarah Goodwin

Kathi Ovnic
Holly Korschun
January 14, 1999

VACCINE DINNER CLUB UNITES RESEARCHERS FROM EMORY, CDC AND UGA

When leaders from Emory's new Emory-Atlanta Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) called a meeting recently to talk about hosting a new group for area investigators interested in all types of vaccine research, they knew the idea would be popular, but they had no idea "how" popular. Maybe it simply required adding the word "dinner" to the name of their club, or perhaps it was the power of the internet, but the new Vaccine Dinner Club quickly attracted a list of 246 registered members from all over Atlanta and as far away as Athens.

On a rainy inaugural evening in January, 172 of those members showed up at Emory to sip wine, eat a light dinner and hear a talk by Rafi Ahmed, Ph.D., director of Emory's new Vaccine Center and the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Vaccine Research.

"I don't know of any other city in the world where there are more people interested in vaccine issues than Atlanta," said Mark Feinberg, M.D., associate director of Emory's CFAR. "When you combine Emory, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of Georgia, institutions like CARE, the childhood vaccine initiative based in Atlanta and the Carter Center, it gives us a background and a combination of expertise that can make our work at Emory's vaccine center much more successful."

A new three-story building housing the Emory Vaccine Center is scheduled to open late this spring on the main grounds of Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. Emory investigators already are involved in multiple research projects to develop safe and effective vaccines for HIV, malaria, flu, measles and tuberculosis.

The Vaccine Dinner Club is sponsored by the Emory Vaccine Center, the CDC, the Emory-Atlanta Center for AIDS Research and the University of Georgia. Meetings are held on the first Wednesday evening of each month and include a casual dinner and a talk by local, national and international vaccine researchers. The location changes each month. Free registration and information can be found at the club's website: http://www.sph.emory.edu/CFAR/VACCINE.


For more general information on The Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center, call Health Sciences Communication's Office at 404-727-5686, or send e-mail to hsnews@emory.edu.


Copyright ©Emory University, 1999. All Rights Reserved.