Discoverer of HIV to Give Public Lecture in UT

The discoverer of HIV and one of the first who claimed HIV to cause AIDS, dr Robert Gallo, will visit University of Tartu and give public lecture on 29th of Sept at 4 pm in uni Assembly Hall.

The lecture is titled "Viruses, Epidemics, and the Prospects for Their Control with Emphasis on HIV/AIDS" and everyone are most welcome to attend.

Dr Robert Charles Gallo (born 1937) is best known for his co-discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the infectious agent responsible for the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and he has been a major contributor to subsequent HIV research. In 1984, Gallo and his collaborators published a series of four papers in the scientific journal Science demonstrating that a retrovirus they had isolated, called HTLV-III in the belief that the virus was related to the leukemia viruses of Gallo's earlier work, was the cause of AIDS.

In 1995, Gallo published his discovery that chemokines, a class of naturally occurring compounds, can block HIV and halt the progression of AIDS. This was heralded by Science magazine as one of the top scientific breakthroughs within the same year of his publication. The role chemokines play in controlling the progression of HIV infection has influenced thinking on how AIDS works against the human immune system and led to a class of drugs used to treat HIV, the chemokine antagonists or entry inhibitors.

Gallo is the director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2005, Gallo co-founded Profectus BioSciences, Inc., which develops and commercializes technologies to reduce the morbidity and mortality caused by human viral diseases, including HIV.

On his visit to UT, Dr Gallo will be accompanied by Harry Huge, the chairman of Harry and Reba Huge Foundation who has been Dr Gallo's legal councellor for 20 years. Harry and Reba Huge Foundation is a great supporter of Nebraska Wesleyan University and its cooperation with University of Tartu.

Additional information: Sirje Üprus, Head of International Cooperation, 737 5615, sirje [dot] uprus [ät] ut [dot] ee

Anneli Miljan
UT Press Officer
+372 737 5683, +372 515 0184
avalik [ät] ut [dot] ee
www.ut.ee