July 19, 2007
Van Voorhis to give Biomedical Research Integrity Lecture
Dr. Wesley Van Voorhis, professor of medicine, will present “Data Sharing between Academia and Industry: Drug Companies Have a Conscience, Too,” from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, July 25, at Hogness Auditorium, Health Sciences Center. He will also give the lecture from 2 to 3 p.m. in Pelton Auditorium, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Van Voorhis, an adjunct professor of pathobiology, is also director of the UW Infectious Disease Training Program and Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases Clinic. His lecture is part of the 2007 Biomedical Research Integrity Series presented by the UW School of Medicine’s Department of Medical History and Ethics.
In his lecture, Van Voorhis will discuss his experience in collaborating with industry to find new drugs for treating parasitic infections. Development of drugs for parasitic infections has been stalled because of the lack of financial incentives for industry. However, industry scientists remain committed to helping encourage Global Health. Recently, private-public-partnerships (PPPs) have been formed and encouraged by funding from government and philanthropic organizations. PPPs, such as the Medicines for Malaria Venture, help form functional alliances between academics and industry. Though the long-term effect of PPPs has not been evaluated, initial assessments suggest PPPs are excellent organizations to stimulate academia-industry collaborations.
Van Voorhis attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an undergraduate and received his medical and doctoral degrees from Cornell Medical College and Rockefeller University. He trained in internal medicine at UC San Francisco.
In addition to practicing medicine and teaching at the UW, Van Voorhis also studies malaria, trypanosomes and syphilis. His research goals are to develop new drugs for the treatment of parasitic diseases, such as malaria, African Sleeping Sickness, Chagas’ disease, and leishmaniasis which sicken or kill over 200 million people each year; and to create a vaccine to prevent syphilis which continues to attack 12 million people each year. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and won numerous academic awards.
For more information about the lecture, please contact 206-221-6548 or mheinfo@u.washington.edu.
