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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Awards $15 Million Grant to University of Maryland

August 1, 2007

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley announced that the University of Maryland received a $15 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The funding will be used to support research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute of Human Virology (IHV) to further develop a promising HIV/AIDS vaccine candidate that, in early studies, has shown potential to provide broad protection against HIV, the governor said.

The $15 million, five-year grant is part of the Gates Foundation’s Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery, an international network of research consortia focused on accelerating the pace of HIV vaccine development, the governor added. 

The grant is being awarded to the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI), IHV’s former parent university, the governor said. The grant will shortly be transferred to the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The vaccine technology has been licensed from UMBI by Wyeth through Profectus BioSciences, the governor added.