James Crowe Jr., MD, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, has been honored by the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies (AABB) for “his innovative and field-advancing research on human antibodies.”
Crowe, the Ann Scott Carell Professor and professor of Pediatrics and Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, is the 2024 recipient of the AABB’s Dale Smith Memorial Award.
The AABB is an international, not-for-profit organization involved in the fields of transfusion medicine and biotherapies. Dale Smith was a longtime Baxter Healthcare executive responsible for establishing the company’s Fenwal Division, a pioneer in the science of blood transfusion medicine.
In announcing the award, AABB officials said, “Dr. Crowe’s work has been instrumental in the development of human monoclonal antibodies and represents a significant expansion of antibody-mediated immune interventions to prevent and treat infectious diseases.”
Crowe and his colleagues have developed cutting-edge technologies to isolate and study antiviral antibodies. Through their pioneering work in computational immunology, they have achieved major advances in the rational design of vaccines and antibodies.
They have isolated human monoclonal antibodies for many pathogenic viruses, including Zika, HIV, dengue, influenza, Ebola, Marburg, chikungunya, West Nile, norovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rotavirus and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Crowe has received many honors for his work including, in 2019, a Future Insight Prize from the science and technology company Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and, in 2020, a Golden Goose Award, inspired by former U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., to recognize the “significant societal impact” of federally funded research.
Major funding for the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center and Crowe lab has been provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, and the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund at Vanderbilt.
