28th Annual Jonathan Lax Lecture Celebrates Nobel Laureate and New HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center at The Wistar Institute
More than 200 attendees joined in-person and virtually from around the world to hear from 2023 Nobel Laureate Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D. — Wistar’s 2024 Jonathan Lax Memorial Awardee, Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research, Director of Vaccine Research, and Director of the Institute for RNA Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania. As the recipient of the 28th annual Jonathan Lax Memorial Award, Dr. Weissman was honored for his contributions to HIV research, which he presented in this year’s lecture, “Development of novel therapies based on RNA: from COVID vaccines to anti-HIV strategies.”
Before the award ceremony began, Wistar president and CEO Dario Altieri, M.D., addressed the audience with a special announcement: Wistar’s $24 million investment in the HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center was to be led by founding director and executive vice president Luis Montaner, D.V.M., D.Phil. Speaking to the importance of the moment for HIV research, Dr. Altieri emphasized the need to build on the progress made so far:
“Wistar’s HIV program has grown dramatically throughout its twenty-five-year duration, with members and participating institutions spanning the world. So the question for us is, how do we build on this legacy of accomplishments? I am absolutely ecstatic to be able to announce today—fittingly at the Jonathan Lax Memorial Lecture—the creation and launch of the new HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center. We look forward to the leadership of Dr. Luis Montaner in bringing the new HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center to new heights of collaboration, impact, and innovation.”
Following Dr. Altieri’s historic announcement, longtime CEO of Philadelphia FIGHT Jane Shull introduced the Jonathan Lax Lecture through a history of the people & activism behind today’s advances in HIV medicines. In speaking on the need for continued investment in science, Ms. Shull meditated on the nature of hope and what it meant to people like Jonathan Lax in the days before effective HIV treatments, let alone a cure.
She quoted former president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel: “Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”
After receiving the Jonathan Lax Memorial Award, Dr. Weissman’s lecture highlighted the long journey of RNA from its discovery in the 60s to its role in mitigating the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. The technology took years of refinement, Dr. Weissman said, but is now poised to transform several fields in human health — including, prominently, HIV cure research.
One key advantage of modern RNA approaches that use lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery is their comparative affordability as a scalable therapeutic. For example, the Weissman lab is developing strategies that use RNA as an alternative method for programming anti-HIV CAR T cells, which are a critical component of HIV cure strategies at Wistar and through the BEAT-HIV Collaboratory.
RNA-based approaches to CAR T cell therapy offer the potential to bypass the current ex vivo cell engineering process that can cause toxicity in patients — and at significant lower cost per-patient when compared to current approaches. As Dr. Weissman said, pointing to global population and resource-distribution maps, “Diseases are where the people are — but the people are not necessarily where the money is. So getting treatments everywhere around the world where they’re needed means finding treatments that are workable at scale.” At the conclusion of his talk, Dr. Weissman received a rousing standing ovation.