HHS Secretary Price Tours Vaccine Research Center

HHS Secretary Tom Price spent a couple of hours at NIH on Aug. 10 touring NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center. After a meeting with top NIH leaders including NIH director Dr. Francis Collins, NIH principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak and acting chief of staff Dr. Carrie Wolinetz, the secretary and several of his top staffers heard science briefings on NIH’s Approach to Emerging Infections by NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci and a VRC overview with updates about the Zika vaccine program by VRC director Dr. John Mascola.

Next on the agenda were three laboratory demonstrations: on the flu vaccine program and other respiratory viruses by VRC deputy director Dr. Barney Graham along with Dr. Michelle Crank, head of the translational sciences core in the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory and head of the flu program under Graham, and Dr. Jeffrey Boyington, a structural biologist in Mascola’s Laboratory of Virology; on cytofluorometric analysis by Dr. Mario Roederer, acting director of the VRC Translational Research Program and chief of the immunotechnology section; and on the Ebola program by Dr. Nancy Sullivan, chief of the VRC biodefense research section.

This was Secretary Price’s second visit to campus; a February visit focused on the Clinical Center.