Our faculty have been pioneers in emerging infectious disease research for more than 25 years. As a physician in San Francisco in the early 1980s, Center for Infection and Immunity director Dr. Ian Lipkin observed with HIV/AIDS the impact of delayed recognition and interventions for new pathogens. This led him to focus on genetic strategies for pathogen discovery. The Center’s contributions include the first use of genetic methods to identify an infectious agent (1987), recognition of West Nile virus in NYC in 1999, first rapid and sensitive diagnostic for SARS, and the discovery of more than 50 new viruses. Lipkin and co-director Thomas Briese were asked by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the Chinese Academy of Science to consult in Beijing at the height of the SARS outbreak in 2003. Despite a US State Department Travel Advisory, they hand-carried 10,000 SARS test kits to Beijing, demonstrated their use on national television, and trained personnel at the Academy of Military Medicine in their use. Lipkin helped Chen Zhu, now Minister of Health, plan the national response to SARS and was named Special Advisor to Minister Xu Guanhua (MOST) and Honorary Director of the Beijing Infectious Disease Center and Professor at Beijing University. In recognition of their expertise and consistent service to the WHO, CII was recently designated the WHO Collaborating Centre for Diagnostics in Zoonotic and Emerging Infectious Diseases. CII is the only non-governmental laboratory in the WHO Global Alert Response Network (GOARN) and one of only two GOARN sites in the US (the other is the CDC in Atlanta). CII provides surge capacity and advanced diagnostic support for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the New York State Department of Health, the CDC and the Department of Defense.
Over the past five years, with support from the NIH, CII has trained more than 30 investigators from 19 countries in infectious disease diagnostics and have established an integrated laboratory network that shares reagents, expertise, and intellectual property. We are working to build diagnostic laboratories in up to 15 sites in the developing world and to pursue pathogen surveillance and discovery in human and animal populations including bushmeat hunters and their prey. Our unique access to samples and data has been invaluable in creating and validating diagnostic assays for infectious diseases and exploring mechanisms by which microbes cause disease. Pathogen discovery projects, particularly at the interface of the human and animal kingdom, will enable us to identify the next HIV before it becomes a global threat.
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