amfAR announces inaugural Mathilde Krim Fellowship Awards for AIDS research

Initiative signals amfAR's renewed commitment to the future vitality and excellence of AIDS research

New York City, January 4, 2008 – amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, has announced that it will award more than $1 million in the inaugural round of Mathilde Krim Fellowships in Basic Biomedical Research.

Named in honor of amfAR’s founding chairman, Dr. Mathilde Krim, the Krim Fellowship program is a new research initiative created to support bright young scientists seeking innovative prevention and treatment solutions to HIV/AIDS. Since the early days of the epidemic, Dr. Krim has been a leading advocate of increased support for research on a disease that others have often preferred to ignore.

“amfAR was overwhelmed by the extraordinarily high caliber of proposals submitted,” said Dr. Rowena Johnston, amfAR’s vice president of research. “This response underscores the urgent need for support of young researchers who bring fresh ideas and vigor to the field and who represent the future of HIV/AIDS research.”

amfAR initiated the new program in response to the dwindling sources of support that are available to young scientists. Yet these same young researchers are often those with the most innovative and daring ideas – ideas that have breakthrough potential.

With Mathilde Krim Fellowship support, these future leaders of AIDS research will be searching for new drug treatment candidates, looking to optimize vaccine design, and even investigating barriers to a cure for HIV infection.

“amfAR has a long and proud history of supporting innovative research,” said amfAR CEO Kevin Robert Frost. “Our new Krim Fellowship program continues that tradition and takes it to a higher level. It is also a fitting tribute to the vision and unwavering commitment to research of our founding chairman.”

Since it was founded in 1985, amfAR has supported the early studies behind almost every significant breakthrough in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, including studies that were critical to the development of protease inhibitors, the powerful drugs that revolutionized the treatment of HIV/AIDS; pioneering research that led to the use of AZT to block mother-to-child transmission of HIV, resulting in the virtual elimination of this form of HIV transmission in the industrialized world; and studies that identified the essential role of the CCR5 co-receptor, on which one of the newest HIV therapies, maraviroc, is based.

amfAR will release grants annually under the Krim Fellowship program. Recipients of 2008 Fellowships are:

Ivan D’Orso, Ph.D./Mentor: Alan Frankel, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco, San Francsico, CA
$125,000