Erica Ollmann Saphire is an American structural biologist and immunologist and a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. She investigates the structural biology of viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever such as Ebola, Sudan, Marburg, Bundibugyo, and Lassa.
Saphire has served as president and CEO of La Jolla Institute for Immunology since 2021. [1]
Saphire earned a Bachelor of Arts in biochemistry and cell biology from Rice University in 1993. She then moved to Scripps Research, where she earned a PhD in molecular biology in 2000. [2] Her doctoral research focused on the crystal structure of a neutralizing antibody against HIV-1. [3] She was an avid rugby player throughout college and graduate school, and toured twice with the United States women's national rugby union team. [4]
After an immunology postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Research, Saphire joined the faculty in the department of immunology as an assistant professor in 2003. She was promoted to associate professor in 2008 and full professor in 2012. [2] In 2019, joined the faculty at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. [5]
Saphire is best known for her research on Ebola virus and other causes of viral hemorrhagic fever. [5] She was the first to discover the structure of the Ebola virus surface glycoprotein and predicted that the Ebola virus receptor was located in the endosome rather than on the cell surface. Later, she showed that the Ebola virus VP40 matrix protein can fold into multiple distinct structures. [3] Her laboratory has also discovered the structure of the glycoproteins of Sudan virus, Marburg virus, Bundibugyo virus, Lassa virus and LCMV. [6] On field work in West Africa, she followed rodents to study how they spread viruses such as Ebola and Lassa. [5] Saphire attracted national media attention in 2014 when she launched a crowdfunding appeal to raise funds for equipment to assist in research to fight Ebola virus. [5] [7] She directs the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Immunotherapeutic Consortium (VIC). [6]
In 2020, Saphire was named director of the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC), an international effort to evaluate human antibodies against the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. [8] [9] Her lab also co-led research into COVID-19 mutations with scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. [10]
In 2021, Saphire was appointed president and CEO of La Jolla Institute for Immunology. She succeeded Dr. Mitchell Kronenberg, who had served as institute president since 2003. Saphire is the institute's fifth president and is the first woman to serve in that role. [11]
Saphire received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the Global Virus Network's Gallo Award for Scientific Excellence and Leadership. [6] She received the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology's Young Investigator Award in 2015 [3] , the Pantheon Award for Academia, Non-Profit, & Research in 2023 [12] , the Marion Spencer Fay Award in 2023 [13] and the Bert & Natalie Vallee Award in Biomedical Science (2023) [14] .
The genus Ebolavirus is a virological taxon included in the family Filoviridae, order Mononegavirales. The members of this genus are called ebolaviruses, and encode their genome in the form of single-stranded negative-sense RNA. The six known virus species are named for the region where each was originally identified: Bundibugyo ebolavirus, Reston ebolavirus, Sudan ebolavirus, Taï Forest ebolavirus, Zaire ebolavirus, and Bombali ebolavirus. The last is the most recent species to be named and was isolated from Angolan free-tailed bats in Sierra Leone. Each species of the genus Ebolavirus has one member virus, and four of these cause Ebola virus disease (EVD) in humans, a type of hemorrhagic fever having a very high case fatality rate. The Reston virus has caused EVD in other primates. Zaire ebolavirus has the highest mortality rate of the ebolaviruses and is responsible for the largest number of outbreaks of the six known species of the genus, including the 1976 Zaire outbreak and the outbreak with the most deaths (2014).
Scripps Research, previously known as The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institute has over 170 laboratories employing 2,100 scientists, technicians, graduate students, and administrative and other staff.
Lassa mammarenavirus (LASV) is an arenavirus that causes Lassa hemorrhagic fever, a type of viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF), in humans and other primates. Lassa mammarenavirus is an emerging virus and a select agent, requiring Biosafety Level 4-equivalent containment. It is endemic in West African countries, especially Sierra Leone, the Republic of Guinea, Nigeria, and Liberia, where the annual incidence of infection is between 300,000 and 500,000 cases, resulting in 5,000 deaths per year.
Viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) are a diverse group of animal and human illnesses. VHFs may be caused by five distinct families of RNA viruses: the families Filoviridae, Flaviviridae, Rhabdoviridae, and several member families of the Bunyavirales order such as Arenaviridae, and Hantaviridae. All types of VHF are characterized by fever and bleeding disorders and all can progress to high fever, shock and death in many cases. Some of the VHF agents cause relatively mild illnesses, such as the Scandinavian nephropathia epidemica, while others, such as Ebola virus, can cause severe, life-threatening disease.
Ian Andrew Wilson is the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology and chair of the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, United States.
La Jolla Institute for Immunology is a non-profit research organization located in La Jolla, San Diego, California. The institute was founded in 1988. It is located in UC San Diego’s Research Park. The institute researches immunology and immune system diseases. The institute employs 220 M.D.s and Ph.D.s, including 23 faculty members and more than 450 employees. Dr. Erica Ollmann Saphire has served as its president and CEO since 2021.
Clarence James Peters, Jr is a physician, field virologist and former U.S. Army colonel. He is noted for his efforts in trying to stem epidemics of exotic infectious diseases such as the Ebola virus, Hanta virus and Rift Valley fever (RVF). He is an eminent authority on the virology, pathogenesis and epidemiology of hemorrhagic fever viruses.
The Vaccine Research Center (VRC), is an intramural division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The mission of the VRC is to discover and develop both vaccines and antibody-based products that target infectious diseases.
Zaire ebolavirus, more commonly known as Ebola virus, is one of six known species within the genus Ebolavirus. Four of the six known ebolaviruses, including EBOV, cause a severe and often fatal hemorrhagic fever in humans and other mammals, known as Ebola virus disease (EVD). Ebola virus has caused the majority of human deaths from EVD, and was the cause of the 2013–2016 epidemic in western Africa, which resulted in at least 28,646 suspected cases and 11,323 confirmed deaths.
James C. Paulson is an American biochemist and biologist known for his work in glycobiology.
Gary J. Nabel is an American virologist and immunologist who is President and chief executive officer of ModeX Therapeutics in Natick, Massachusetts. He was the founding director of Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Jean-Paul Joseph Gonzalez is a French virologist. He graduated from the Medical School of Bordeaux University France.
Helen Jane Dyson is a British-born biophysicist and a professor of integrative structural and computational biology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. She was the 15th editor-in-chief of the Biophysical Journal. She was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Shane Patrick Crotty is a professor of immunology in the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
Nancy Jean Sullivan is an American cell biologist researching filovirus immunology and vaccine development. She is a senior investigator and chief of the biodefense research section at the Vaccine Research Center. Her team discovered the monoclonal antibody, mAb114.
Dennis R. Burton is a professor of immunology and microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, in the United States. He also works in AIDS vaccine research, and is scientific director of the IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center there. He sits on the steering committee of the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard.
Joseph Fair is a virologist and former vice president and director of research and development for Metabiota, Inc. Since March 2020 he has been a science contributor for the American television network NBC.
Katherine Jane Doores is a British biochemist who is a senior lecturer in the School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences at King's College London. During the COVID-19 pandemic Doores studied the levels of antibodies in patients who had suffered from COVID-19.
Elina Zúñiga is an Argentinian Immunologist and Professor of Molecular Biology in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Zúñiga has made critical discoveries regarding host-virus interactions in both acute and chronic infections. Using lymphocytic choriomeningitis models (LCMV) and murine cytomegalovirus models, her laboratory at UCSD studies host immune adaptations in chronic viral disease and methods of viral suppression of the immune system in order to develop novel methods and identify novel targets of anti-viral defence. In 2018, Zúñiga was chosen by the American Association of Immunologists to give the international Vanguard Lecture. Zúñiga is also co-founder of the Global Immunotalks series which she and Carla Rothlin started in 2020 as a means to make cutting-edge immunology research freely available and easily accessible to a global audience.
Kristian G. Andersen is a Danish evolutionary biologist and professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.
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