PRINTStefan Sarafianos: The HIV slayer
Assistant Professor, MU School of Medicine
November 12, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Age:46 | Time spent in Columbia: Three years
The letter began: “Dear Dr. Sarafianos, It is our great pleasure to announce your selection as the recipient of the Dorsett L. Spurgeon M.D. Distinguished Medical Research Award for 2009.” The lengthy correspondence, signed by two deans from MU’s School of Medicine, included anonymous quotations from others in the medical community: “Stefan is smart, well read, energetic, an excellent writer and very creative,” reads an excerpt. “He is extremely collegial and always willing to do more than his share of the work.” In short, Sarafianos’ colleagues agree that the assistant professor of microbiology and immunology deserves the award: He has found a way to stop HIV.
Stefan Sarafianos is an Assistant Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the University of ...
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Sarafianos worked with a team of researchers at NIH, the University of Pittsburgh and in Japan to show that the molecule EFdA can function as both a microbicide that prevents the spread of HIV and as a therapeutic for the treatment of HIV patients. EFdA targets the main HIV enzyme responsible for viral replication and stops the virus from multiplying. The addition of EFdA to existing HIV drugs will be a great development for those living with the disease — including 10,000 Missourians.
The compound is 60,000 times more powerful than any other drug currently used to treat HIV. “Right now combinations of existing therapeutics do a good job suppressing viral replication,” Sarafianos says. But resistant viruses always emerge, and eventually drug companies will need something new. “They should be thinking in a longer horizon,” he says. He hopes that companies will eventually develop the product as oral therapeutics, topical ointments applied to the skin or microbicides to be used in condoms.
Sarafianos’ lab — a team of nearly 20 people — also studies illnesses including SARS and foot and mouth disease. “We cover a lot of ground,” he says, but he’s quick to add that all research deals with replicating viruses and is therefore related and transferable. Sarafianos’ grant money (almost $4 million awarded in the past three years) might spotlight HIV, but other areas of research benefit as well.
“Columbia was hardly on the map in terms of HIV research five years ago,” the native Greek says of progress made by MU’s recently recruited scientists. “Something is happening here, and it’s only going to get better.” Sarafianos will elaborate on this idea when he accepts his award Nov. 12 as part of the School of Medicine Research Day.
Sarafianos has studied HIV since completing his doctorate at Georgetown in 1993. Sixteen years later, he confidently communicates a philosophy to his four children: “It’s great to do what you like in life and even greater if it helps others.”
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Posted by greg smith on Nov 12, 2009 at 8:27 p.m. (Report Comment)