With the opening of the Joint ICGEB-Emory Vaccine Center, Emory made its mark in New Delhi, India on Jan. 14. The center, a partnership between EVC and the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), will conduct vaccine research on diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

The ICGEB-Emory Vaccine Center is an initiative of the Emory Global Health Institute and was funded by one of the very first Global Health Partnership Program Grants.

Ten Emory faculty members, including EVC Director Rafi Ahmed and Thomas J. Lawley, dean of the School of Medicine, attended the opening ceremony at New Delhi.

“This joint international research center will provide unique opportunities for collaborative research in vaccine development that go beyond what currently is available,” Ahmed said in an Emory press release.

One of the goals of the collaboration is to understand the immunity to infectious diseases that globally affect millions of people every year, wrote Rama Amara, an EVC faculty member currently working toward finding a vaccine to control AIDS on the Indian subcontinent, in an e-mail to the Wheel.

“This information is key to developing vaccines to cure these diseases,” Amara wrote.

The Global Health Institute, founded in Sep. 2006, provides a platform for Emory students, faculty and alumni to find solutions to challenging global health problems affecting the developing world. The Institute funds “promising new partnerships,” wrote Roseanne Waters, administrator of the Global Health Institute, in an e-mail to the Wheel.

“We selected this particular partnership for funding because it had all the qualities we are seeking: a strong partnership addressing critical health issues in a priority location, with clear potential for future growth,” Waters wrote.

The ICGEB, founded by the World Health Organization, undertakes research in biotechnology. The New Delhi center is one of ICGEB’s three research centers, the other two of which are in Trieste, Italy, and Cape Town, South Africa. The ICGEB provides the infrastructure for the new vaccine center in New Delhi.

“I have every expectation that this new joint vaccine center will have a significant impact on future vaccine discoveries aimed at fighting the most difficult infectious diseases,” Lawley said in the press release.

— Contact Lakshmi Chandrashekar.