LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
Of all the challenges that threaten the world’s population, biosecurity – including highly infectious viruses being used as biological agents to harm mankind – poses one of the greatest, global risks. Viruses cause millions of deaths each year. Old, young, rich and poor – all are susceptible to these silent killers.
The Global Virus Network (GVN) is an essential and critical defense against viruses that pose a clear and present threat to public health. It is a coalition comprised of eminent virologists spanning more than 30 countries worldwide, and working to advance knowledge about how to identify and diagnose such viruses, how they spread and make us sick, as well as to develop drugs and vaccines to prevent illness and death while providing the patients with the best treatments.
No single institution in the world has expertise in all viral areas except the GVN. GVN coalesces the best medical virologists to leverage individual strengths and to focus global teams of specialists on key scientific problems. The power of GVN lies in its global reach, the depth of its science, and its commitment to solving viral challenges facing the human population.
GVN has an important role to play in our preparedness and response to emerging viral threats, especially in the aspects related to research and development, working in close coordination with all national and international institutions at stake.
It has been a great honor for me to be appointed President of the Global Virus Network. I look forward to helping the GVN grow and develop, both scientifically, operationally and financially as well as to working with Dr. Robert Gallo (GVN Co-Founder and International Scientific Advisor) and all GVN members without whom the GVN would not have been possible.
I hope you will join me.
Christian Bréchot, MD, PhD
President - Global Virus Network (GVN)
Robert Gallo, MD
The Homer & Martha Gudelsky Distinguished Professor in Medicine and Microbiology
Co-Founder & Director, Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore
Co-Founder of the Global Virus Network & Chair of the GVN’s Scientific Leadership Board
A Letter from the GVN International Scientific Advisor and Chair, Scientific Leadership Board
The concept of a Global Virus Network (GVN) began back in the 1980’s when a small group of virologists realized that virtually no working virologists had a global directive for researching the cause of AIDS during the earliest years of the epidemic. Conversely, important groups such as the World Health Organization which did have a global mandate for combatting the new disease had virtually no resident expertise in the kind of virus that was subsequently shown to be the cause of AIDS, namely, a retrovirus. Examining the history of other great epidemics of the 20th century, Influenza and Polio, reveals similar disconnects between available expertise and the urgent public need to identify causation and prevention modes.
GVN Centers, with strong working relationships among them, are poised to engage in any outbreak situation by providing the world’s only network of top basic virologists from around the globe covering all classes of human, and many animal, viral threats. GVN is also committed to training the next generation of virologists in order to meet the critical need posed by the graying of members of our own discipline, and to inform and educate policymakers and members of the public about the role of virologists in mitigating viral illness and preventing infections from taking hold in populations. This is especially important as my colleagues and I have noticed a significant decline in students entering the field of virology.
-Robert C. Gallo, MD
Mathew L. Evins
Chairman & Treasurer, GVN Board
Chairman and CEO of Evins, Ltd.
Letter from the Chairman
Having been privileged to serve as Secretary and Treasurer since the organization’s founding, I am incredibly honored to have been elected Chairman of the Global Virus Network. I could not be more appreciative nor more grateful for the opportunity of working closely with Dr. Gallo and Dr. Bréchot, the GVN team and with my distinguished colleagues on the Board of Directors to advance and further the mission and consequence of the GVN.
The COVID-19 pandemic has conclusively demonstrated the absolute and compelling need for a global and apolitical organization committed to the preparedness, defense and first research response to emerging, existing and unidentified viruses that pose a clear and present threat to public health. The GVN was created to address that threat by coalescing eminent virologists, epidemiologists, infectious disease experts and public health specialists throughout the world, working collaboratively and accretively to advance knowledge about how to identify and diagnose pandemic viruses, mitigate and control how such viruses spread and make us sick, train the next generation of virologists, facilitate the development of drugs, vaccines and treatments to combat them as well as addressing the pervasive and often politicized public disinformation and misinformation. The GVN can and must be the definitive go-to authority and resource to anticipate, respond and mitigate global viral threats, as well as a beacon for advocacy, education, enlightenment and insight based solely upon science.
The GVN is at a critical inflection point. Thanks to the outstanding acumen and expertise as well as the relationships and resources of the members of the GVN’s board of directors, we are now in a position to make the critical and consequential decisions necessary to advance and further the sustainability of the GVN, both financially and operationally, to ensure the future viability of the organization and make sure that the world will never again be unprepared, untrained, ill-equipped and uninformed to deal with pandemic viruses.”
Mathew L. Evins, Chairman & Treasurer
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Mathew L. Evins
Chairman & Treasurer, GVN Board
Chairman and CEO of Evins, Ltd.
GVN Board Executive Committee
David Scheer
Vice Chairman & Secretary, GVN Board
President, Scheer & Company, Inc
GVN Board Executive Committee
Christian Brechot, MD, PHD
President, Global Virus Network
GVN Board Executive Committee
Jason Bernhard
Head of North American Healthcare Investment Banking and
Chief Operating Officer – North American Financial Advisory of Lazard
Lawrence Blatt, PhD
Global Head of Infectious Diseases,
Janssen Pharmaceuticals,
President and CEO, Alios Biopharma.
Marc Bonneville, DVM
Scientific & Medical Director, Fondation Mérieux
Tomas Cihlar, PhD
Vice President, Virology, Gilead Sciences, Inc.
Robert C. Gallo, MD
Director Institute of Human Virology, GVN
Co-Founder and International Scientific Advisor
GVN Board Executive Committee
Brett P. Giroir, MD
CEO
Altesa BioScience
Rosarii Griffin, BA, HDE, MEd., (UCC), MSc. DPhil. (Oxon), FRSA, DDVS
Director
Centre for Global Development at the University of Cork College
William Hall MD, PhD
Professor in the School of Medicine and Medical Science at University College Dublin
GVN Board Executive Committee
Stephen Israel
Vice Chairman, Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals
Korn Ferry
Lan Kennedy-Davis
Partner with RumbergerKirk, P.A.
Yang Liu, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer, OncoImmune
Timothy Moynahan
Founder & Owner: Moynahan Partners & Moynahan Law Firm
GVN Board Executive Committee
G. Richard Olds, MD, MACP
President of St. George’s University in Grenada
Peter Palese, PhD
Horace W. Goldsmith Professor and Chair Department of Microbiology. Professor, Department of Medicine Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Steven Phillips, MD, MPH
Vice President of Science and Strategy, COVID Collaborative
John C Pottage, Jr, M.D.
Retired Chief Medical and Scientific Officer, ViiV Healthcare
Raymond Schinazi, PhD, Hon DSc
Professor of Pediatrics and Director
Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology, Emory University
Yiming Shao, MD, PhD
Chief Expert on AIDS, Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention
Vice Chair, Chinese Microbiology Society
Juliette M. Tuakli, MD, MPH
Chair, Board of Trustees, United Way Worldwide (UWW)
Anders Vahlne, MD, PhD
Professor Emeritus in Clinical Virology, Karolinska Institute
GVN Board Executive Committee
Pan Zheng, M.D., Ph.D.
Founder, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, OncoImmune
SENIOR ADVISORS
Stefano Bertozzi MD, PhD
Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist Google
Jose Esparza, MD, PhD
Past President of the GVN
Glenda Gray, MBBCh, FCPAED
President, Medical Research Council of South Africa
Shyam Kottilil, MBBS, PhD
Director, Division of Clinical Care and Research
Division Head, Infectious Diseases
Institute of Human Virology
University of Maryland School of Medicine
Jaykumar Menon, JD, MIA
Chair and Co-Founder, Open Source Pharma Foundation
Co-Founder, The India Nutrition Initiative
Kathleen M. Neuzil, MD, MPH, FIDSA
Director, Center for Vaccine Development, University of Maryland School of Medicine
MV Pillai, MD
Professor, Oncology, Thomas Jefferson University
Chair, Oncology, Aster MedCity
Stanley Plotkin, PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania
Physician Emeritus, Wistar
Consultant, Sanofi Pasteur & Biotechs
John Sinnott, MD, FACP
J Cullison Professor and Chairman
Department of Internal Medicine
USF Health Morsani College of Medicine
Mario Stevenson, PhD
Raymond F. Schinazi and Family Endowed Chair in Biomedicine
Professor of Medicine
Director, Institute of AIDS and Emerging Infectious Diseases
University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine
SPECIAL ADVISORS
Nora Samaranayake
Senior Advisor on Public Relations
Institute of Human Virology
University of Maryland School of Medicine