Katze receives award from International Society of Interferon and Cytokine Research

Dr. Michael Katze, professor of microbiology and associate director of molecular sciences at the Regional Primate Research Center, has been named one of two 1999 recipients of the Milstein Award by the International Society of Interferon and Cytokine Research (ISICR). He will share the $20,000 award with Adi Kimchi of the Weizmann Institute in Israel.

Michael Katze

The Milstein Award is given to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to research related to interferons and cytokines in a basic or clinical field. Katze is being honored for his work studying virus-host interactions and the evolutionary battle between viruses and the cells they infect.

Katze has long been interested in understanding how viruses evade the host defense interferon system. His laboratory has studied several different virus systems including influenza virus, adenovirus, poliovirus and the primate lentiviruses, HIV-1, HIV-2 and SIV. Recently he received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to focus on understanding the molecular mechanisms by which hepatitis C virus, which infects more than 2 percent of the world’s population, evades the antiviral effects of interferon.

He has been instrumental in setting up the Center for Expression Array Analysis, using DNA micro-array technology, in the Department of Microbiology and the Regional Primate Research Center. That center is funded by a grant from the Murdock Foundation.

Katze and Kimchi will receive the award at an international meeting of the ISICR in early September, in Paris. The mayor of the city will present the award. ¶g