UW Researcher Earns Award To Study Pediatric AIDS

A famous 1969 UW–Madison graduate who died from HIV infection acquired through a tainted blood transfusion is touching the life and work of a campus AIDS researcher four years after her death.

David Watkins

David Watkins, a researcher at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, is one of five scientists in the world to receive a 1998 Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Award. He will receive $680,940 from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which Glaser co-founded.

Watkins will study cellular immune responses in rhesus monkeys to simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) during pregnancy and infancy. This monkey version of the AIDS virus was discovered in 1982 as analogous to HIV.

The study will allow researchers to examine initial molecular responses to an invading retrovirus at the time of infection, a situation that cannot be studied in humans. One goal is to prevent infection, or to change the course of the disease by eliciting a cellular immune response.

“We have gained an increased understanding of the pathobiology of AIDS and how to potentially develop vaccines against the disease,” said Watkins, a pathology professor in the UW Medical School. “Our center and others are now also engaging in research toward the goal of preventing the AIDS virus from being transmitted from HIV-infected mothers to their babies.”

Elizabeth Glaser, the award’s namesake who died of AIDS in December 1994, learned in the mid-1980s that both she and her two children were HIV positive. The 1969 UW–Madison psychology graduate and wife of actor-director Paul Glaser became the nation’s foremost crusader on the issue of pediatric AIDS. She co-founded the Pediatric AIDS Foundation with Susan DeLaurentis and Susie Zeegen in 1988.

The Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Awards were developed to establish a team of outstanding scientists who will work together to share ideas to resolve critical issues in pediatric HIV/AIDS research. The foundation has allocated $10.2 million to 15 researchers since the award began in 1996.

Rhesus monkeys share more than 90 percent of the human genome and contract many of the same diseases as humans. This makes them a prime animal model for studying AIDS, cancer, diabetes, reproductive problems and other biomedical concerns.

The UW Primate Center is one of seven primate research centers in the United States supported by the National Institutes of Health. It is a base for local, national and international research in biomedicine and conservation biology and has an annual operating budget of approximately $25 million.

The foundation is the leading national nonprofit organization committed to identifying, funding and conducting basic medical research in pediatric HIV and AIDS.