Regina McEnery

In this guest post, Regina McEnery from IAVI Report writes about the planned closure of the New England Primate Research Center and its effects on the community of HIV researchers who conduct primate studies. As animal facilities go, the New England Primate Research Center (NEPRC) had attained a legendary status on the roster of US biomedical research institutions. A good number of important discoveries have been made within its walls in the half century it has been around. Researchers working there generated some of the earliest evidence that AIDS is a viral disease, and subsequently discovered the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which causes the monkey version of AIDS. It was there, as well, that scientists demonstrated that a vaccine can prevent the transmission of SIV, suggesting that an HIV vaccine is possible. Nor were the NEPRC’s contributions to science confined to HIV and AIDS. The facility has hosted research of profound relevance to everything from cancer to neurological disease and addiction. But lately it had become increasingly clear that this storied institution’s best days were behind it—so far behind it, in fact, that the Harvard Medical School (HMS), which oversees the center, decided it should be shut down. Its decline was slow and fueled largely by management and money problems, rather than the quality of its research. The NEPRC has, for example, been cited at least four times since 2010 by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for failure to comply with the requirements of the Animal Control Act. The most recent citation, issued last year, related to a cotton-top tamarin found dehydrated after an employee neglected to provide sufficient water to the squirrel-sized monkey. After examining its recent health history, the NEPRC veterinarian decided to euthanize the monkey, according to the USDA report. The New England Primate Research Center, which had attained a legendary status on the roster of US biomedical research institutions, will be closing. Photo courtesy of IAVI Report. John Harding, acting director of the Division of Comparative Medicine within the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP)—the National Institutes of Health arm that provides the core grants for all national primate research centers—notes that it is “ very uncommon to find violations of the sort where animals died.” Still, HMS’s decision to wind down the facility by 2015 has upset the close-knit community of primate researchers. “We were all shocked,” says Ron Veazey, a professor of pathology at the Tulane National Primate Research Center in Louisiana. “Very few people can say, ‘we saw this coming.’ In an ideal world, all those [NEPRC] investigators will be able to transfer projects to other primate centers and everything will go on. But we can’t be sure.” The NEPRC decision to phase out its research also raises serious questions about the future of the approximately 130 projects it hosts—many of which relate to AIDS. Ditto for the 2,000 or so primates housed at the facility in Southborough, MA. The closure is likely to be widely felt throughout the field of HIV research, especially in the areas of vaccine and drug development. “Literally every class of HIV drug, with the exception of protease inhibitors, was first tested in monkeys,” noted Veazey. Louis Picker, a professor of pathology/molecular microbiology and immunology affiliated with the Oregon National Primate Research Center, says he was upset by the decision to shut down the NEPRC—where he did research during his laboratory and pathology medicine residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. But he wasn’t surprised. “You could see the writing on the wall when this first started, two to three years ago, with the mishandling of the animal issues.” Picker says that Harvard’s response to the animal care issues—replacing NEPRC director Ron Desrosiers and two on-site veterinarians—served to drive investigators away rather than fix the problem. HMS, however, did not single out the animal care issues in explaining its decision. In evaluating its long-term needs, HMS says, it concluded that closing NEPRC would be more beneficial and efficient than pouring more resources into maintaining and renewing its supporting grant. “We were surprised,” says Harding. Yet Harvard’s decision, he says, should not be viewed as a signal that interest in funding nonhuman primate research is waning. “In fact, we see a continued need for this.” If anything, says Harding, the recent termination of the large HVTN 505 trial suggests more nonhuman primate research is needed. Still, even researchers personally unaffected by the closure of the NEPRC find its disappearance from the HIV research map hard to take in. “Personally, I see it as a loss for Harvard and for the New England research committee,” said Ana Aldovini, a scientist at Boston Children’s Hospital who once used the NEPRC, but now collaborates with Tulane. “I can’t imagine it not being a loss.” A longer version of this article is available at www.iavireport.org.

In this guest post, Regina McEnery—science writer for IAVI Report and VAX—writes about a rally held in Washington, DC, on April 8 to call on federal policymakers to support health research. This post originally appeared on the IAVI Report blog. Megan Kane never thought her first post-doc assignment would be a temporary job in science communications. The Virginia resident, who graduated from Johns Hopkins recently with a PhD in human genetics, had hoped to land a job with an academic or government lab focused on HIV and AIDS. She has a particular interest in long-term nonprogressors—HIV-infected individuals who are able to control HIV for up to a decade or more without ever taking ARVs. But after a 5 ½ month search and about a dozen applications, Kane found the hiring climate about as arid as the Sahara. It wasn’t that researchers weren’t impressed with her credentials or interested in hiring her, she said. They were just reluctant or unable to add new positions—which typically go to early career investigators—due to the rocky funding climate. The fear is that federal funding for basic science, which isn’t exactly exorbitant now, could get a whole lot worse in coming months, thanks to the sequester. That is the $85 billion in automatic and largely indiscriminate spending cuts took effect March 1, which could result in a 5 percent drop in the National Institute of Health’s annual budget of $31 billion. Kane said her friends are all having a hard time finding jobs. And, at least in her case, the frustration doesn’t end with her career. “My husband works for the federal government and so he’s looking at furlough days,” said Kane, who works for Research!America as a communications intern. “That’s another reason why I need a permanent job.” Advocates held a rally on April 8 to call on federal policymakers to stop sequestration from damaging health research efforts. I ran into Kane, dressed in her white coat and snapping pictures, at an April 8 rally championing support for medical research. Research!America was one of the organizers of the rally, held in Washington, DC, in front of the Carnegie Library, where etched in stone were the words: “Dedicated to the diffusion of knowledge.” The library is adjacent to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, where an estimated 18,000 researchers, policymakers, and advocates had gathered for the annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting. It was no coincidence that the rally was staged the same week as the AACR meeting: it is one of the largest scientific conferences in the world, and cancer commands the largest chunk of the NIH budget. People attending the AACR meeting were encouraged to attend the rally—and a few thousand obliged, grabbing free T-shirts with empty boxes printed on the back, so people could spell out why they were there. Many listed cancer, heart disease or stroke. There was a pancreatic cancer group, a diabetes group, and an endocrine disorders group. About half-dozen women wore hot-pink feather boas around their neck to show their support for breast cancer research. And one lone woman, who declined to give her name, said she was rallying for shigella, a bacterium that causes dysentery and which she has been studying for about eight years. The rally lasted about two hours and had a long list of speakers that included Regan Hofmann, former editor of POZ magazine and a long-term survivor of HIV. Hofmann said she has been grateful for the daily dose of combination antiretroviral therapy that has kept her alive since her diagnosis in 1996. “But these drugs have side effects and are not easy to take,” she said. “We need a lot more research and development to find preventive and therapeutic vaccines.” Hofmann said she is grateful for the “extra time on the planet” but “I never stop hoping that one day I won’t have to take the pills.” She is looking to research to help make that happen.