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Office of the Director
Key Personnel
Mary E. Enama, M.A., PA-C

Mary Enama joined the Vaccine Research Center in January 2002. Her role is as Protocol Specialist and as Project Officer for data management support for the Clinical Trials Core. Her responsibilities include developing clinical trials protocol documents in collaboration with study teams, ensuring that the human subjects protection, regulatory and scientific review processes are completed before and throughout conduct of the studies, and advising on the clinical data collection and reporting plans needed for protocol-specified analyses and safety monitoring.

Ms. Enama notes that, “Vaccine clinical trials are team efforts, requiring the broad range of expertise provided by laboratory scientists, clinicians, statisticians, pharmacists, regulatory and support staff. It is a unique and rewarding opportunity to work with the dedicated staff of the Clinical Trials Core to perform the initial clinical evaluation of novel vaccine constructs developed by the VRC such as multiclade HIV vaccines and Ebola virus, SARS and West Nile virus vaccines.”

Prior to joining the VRC, Ms. Enama had nearly 10 years of experience related to clinical research with a contract research organization. During this time she worked on clinical research-related contracts with the Division of AIDS of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and with the Investigational Drug Branch and Regulatory Affairs Branch of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program of the National Cancer Institute. Her work included writing clinical trial protocols, preparation and maintenance of Investigational New Drug applications, adverse event data collection and reporting, clinical site protocol training, and assisting with the review and reporting of clinical trial results.

Ms. Enama was educated first as a field biologist and laboratory scientist, earning a B.A. in Environmental Studies at Franklin and Marshall College and M.A. in Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. She later earned a B.S. from the Physician Assistant program at Medical College of Georgia and worked as a clinician in Family Practice and Pediatric Nephrology before specializing in clinical trials research.