Overbaugh receives Glaser Scientist Award

Julie Overbaugh

Dr. Julie Overbaugh, UW associate professor of microbiology and member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, last week received one of four 1999 Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Awards presented by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The awards are presented by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Since 1992 Overbaugh has been a member of the Nairobi HIV/STD Research Project, an international collaborative group centered at the University of Nairobi. She will base her Glaser-funded research on a collection of samples from a recently completed clinical trial of HIV transmission via breast feeding in Kenya. The trial was headed by Dr. Joan Kreiss, UW professor of medicine and edipemiology.

The Glaser Foundation project will build on the information we are learning from this trial to try and understand what features of the mothers’ viruses make HIV transmission more likely to their infants,” Overbaugh says. “For example, how does the genetic makeup of the virus influence transmission, and is there a common genetic signature to viruses that infect infants?”

She is particularly concerned with finding appropriate, low-cost means to control the spread of HIV in developing nations.

“We have to remember,” she said, “that most HIV transmission is occurring in developing countries, and it is in this setting that we face our major challenge for halting the worldwide devastation of HIV.”

At FHCRC, Overbaugh has been a member of the Division of Cancer Biology and Molecular Medicine and the Division of Public Health Sciences since Jan. 1.