Office of the Director
Director's Profile
Gary J. Nabel, M.D., Ph.D.
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| Dr. Gary J. Nabel |
Dr. Gary Nabel serves as Director of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC), and also as Scientific Director of this specialized intramural research program within the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Nabel provides overall direction and scientific leadership of the basic, clinical, and translational research activities of the VRC, and guides VRC development of novel vaccine strategies against HIV and other emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, including Ebola/Marburg viral hemorrhagic fevers, influenza, West Nile Virus, SARS, and smallpox. VRC efforts are directed at several major areas of vaccine research and development including: definition of markers and immune mechanisms that may protect against HIV infection; influence of cellular and humoral immune responses; the conception, design, and preparation of vaccine candidates for HIV and other infectious diseases; and the initiation of multiple human clinical trials to test the safety and immune response of these vaccine candidates. Under Dr. Nabel’s leadership, the VRC was able to initiate its first clinical trial, a phase I study of an HIV/AIDS vaccine, within a year after opening, and has developed an HIV candidate vaccine that has been tested in Phase I and II trials, and is advancing into a Phase II efficacy trial. Dr. Nabel also serves as Chief of the Virology Laboratory (VL) at the VRC which examines molecular regulation of HIV replication, optimization of immune responses to gene-based vaccination, and development of improved HIV envelope immunogens.
Dr. Nabel graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1975, then continued at Harvard, completing his Ph.D. in 1980 and his M.D. 2 years later. He then served as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of David Baltimore at MIT’s Whitehead Institute. Before his appointment at the VRC, Dr. Nabel served as the Henry Sewall Professor of Internal Medicine, professor of Biochemistry, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In addition to his faculty positions, Dr. Nabel also served as the Director of the Center for Gene Therapy and co-director of the Center for Molecular Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Nabel has also established a distinguished track record in developing novel therapeutic approaches. For example, Dr. Nabel and his colleagues were the first to use direct gene transfer to introduce therapeutic proteins into patients with melanoma, showing the feasibility and safety of this approach.
In recognition of his expertise at the forefront of virology, immunology, gene therapy, and molecular biology, Dr. Nabel was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1998, where he still serves. Among his many other honors, Dr. Nabel has received the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology-Amgen Scientific Achievement Award as well as the Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2003. Dr. Nabel has been chosen as the Keynote Speaker and Distinguished Lecturer at numerous scientific meetings, including the 2007 Distinguished Lecturer of Virology at Oxford University. He is also author of over 330 scientific publications.
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