Newswise — January 10, 2024, Nutley, NJ – The Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI), which rapidly creates innovative scientific solutions to benefit patients with cancer and infectious disease, is proud to welcome renowned scientist Daria Hazuda, Ph.D., to its board of trustees. The CDI is a member of Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey largest and most comprehensive health care network.
Dr. Hazuda serves as head of infectious disease and vaccine research at Generate: Biomedicines, leading the research team in identifying and prioritizing the best applications of the Generate Platform in infectious disease and vaccine research.
“Dr. Hazuda is a terrific addition to the CDI Board of Trustees, and we look forward to sharing in her considerable experience and expertise she brings from her career,” said Robert C. Garrett, FACHE, the chief executive officer of Hackensack Meridian Health. “The CDI has become a hub for incredible scientific minds, and it only continues to attract the best and the brightest. This is what our health network had in mind when the CDI was founded in 2019, and it continues to surpass even our initial lofty expectations”
“We are excited to welcome Dr. Hazuda to the CDI. The breadth and depth of her expertise will provide new opportunities for innovation to rapidly impact a changing health care landscape,” said David Perlin, Ph.D., chief scientific officer and executive vice president of the CDI, and professor of Medical Sciences at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. “Her extensive background in antivirals and antibacterials will strengthen our ability to push the boundaries of translational science by providing solutions to meet the demands of the modern world.”
Generate:Biomedicines is the first drug-generation company pioneering a machine learning-powered generative biology platform with the ability to create new drugs on demand across a wide range of biologic modalities. The Generate Platform – which is a continuous loop to generate, build, measure, and learn – can drastically increase the speed at which targets and therapeutics are identified and validated. This closed loop will improve the specificity of target engagement by generated proteins and reduce the time and cost of identifying and developing clinical candidates.
Along with her current leading-edge research platform, Dr. Hazuda brings deep discovery and development experience in antivirals, antibacterials, and vaccines from a 30-year career at Merck & Co., Inc. Most recently, Dr. Hazuda was the vice president of infectious disease and vaccines and chief scientific officer of the Merck Cambridge Research site. At Merck, she held various positions of increasing responsibility within both the research and medical affairs organizations, managing cross-functional research teams covering antibiotic, antiviral and vaccine research, neuroscience discovery and innovative platform development teams. She led teams to discover and develop multiple drugs that have been approved, including antivirals for HIV, hepatitis C, and cytomegalovirus, as well as anti-bacterials. Notably, Dr. Hazuda led research efforts that identified the first-in-class HIV integrase inhibitor, which won the 2008 Prix Galien award.
Over the course of her esteemed career, Dr. Hazuda has contributed to more than 200 peer-reviewed publication and received numerous other awards, including The David Barry Drug Development for Antiviral Therapy Award, The Bernie Field Lecture Award, The Distinguished Research Career Award in Retrovirology (Ohio State University), and The American Chemical Society Heroes of Chemistry Award.
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Daria Hazuda to find new ways of fighting disease and communicate those discoveries to both physicians and patient populations to improve health outcomes,” said Ihor Sawczuk, M.D., FACS, president of Academics, Research and Innovation at Hackensack Meridian Health, the founding chair of the Hackensack Meridian Health Research Institute, and the associate dean of Clinical Integration and professor and chair emeritus of Urology at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine.
“It is through ongoing education, advancements, and knowledge that we can create new translational models to better integrate research with clinical care,” added Dr. Sawczuk.
Dr. Hazuda is a Fellow of the American Society of Microbiology. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in immunology at SmithKline (now GSK), and earlier trained as a biochemist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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ABOUT HACKENSACK MERIDIAN HEALTH
Hackensack Meridian Health is a leading not-for-profit health care organization that is the largest, most comprehensive and truly integrated health care network in New Jersey, offering a complete range of medical services, innovative research and life-enhancing care. The network has 18 hospitals and more than 500 patient care locations, which include ambulatory care centers, surgery centers, home health services, long-term care and assisted living communities, ambulance services, lifesaving air medical transportation, rehabilitation centers, urgent care centers, physician practice locations, and a fitness and wellness center. With more than 35,000 team members and 7,000 physicians, Hackensack Meridian Health is a distinguished leader in health care philanthropy and committed to the health and well-being of communities throughout New Jersey.
The network’s notable distinctions include having more U.S. News-ranked hospitals than any other health system in New Jersey, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, 2022-23. Hackensack University Medical Center is nationally-ranked by U.S. News & World Report in four specialties, more than any other hospital in New Jersey. Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital at Hackensack University Medical Center, and K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, are ranked #1 in the state and top 20 in the Mid-Atlantic Region by U.S. News & World Report’s 2023-24 Best Children’s Hospital Report. Additionally, their combined nephrology, urology, cancer, and neurology/neurosurgery programs rank in the top 50 in the United States. To learn more, visit www.hackensackmeridianhealth.org.
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR DISCOVERY AND INNOVATION
The Center for Discovery and Innovation, a member of Hackensack Meridian Health, translates current innovations in science to improve clinical outcomes for patients. More than 29 laboratories, 185 professional researchers and physician-scientists at the CDI have set their sights on cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, and other acute and chronic diseases. Clinical need drives the scientific insights, and their application, for these researchers, as shown in the real-time response to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in new diagnostics, therapies, and surveillance abilities. The CDI leverages a new wave of scientific advances involving genetics, cell engineering of the human immune system, and imaging to better diagnose, treat and prevent disease through personalized medicine approaches. For additional information, please visit www.hmh-cdi.org.
ABOUT HACKENSACK MERIDIAN HEALTH RESEARCH INSTITUTE (HMHRI):
HMHRI leads and organizes a connected ecosystem bringing together clinicians, scientists, and educators to respond to the health problems of our time, in real-time. HMHRI is dedicated to accelerating discovery, innovation, and translation of scientific breakthroughs that address unmet clinical needs.
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