Gary Nabel

Gary J. Nabel is an American virologist and immunologist. He is the current president and chief executive officer of ModeX Therapeutics, based in Natick, Massachusetts. He was the founding director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a position he held from 1999 until an unspecified date.^[1]

Gary J. Nabel
Alma mater	Harvard University Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Scientific career
Fields	Virology, Immunology
Institutions	Sanofi National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Brigham and Women's Hospital Harvard Medical School University of Michigan

Education

Nabel completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard University in 1975, followed by an M.D. in 1980 and Ph.D. in 1982. His dissertation research was conducted in the laboratory of immunologist Harvey Cantor.^{[citation needed]} He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute, studying the regulation of HIV gene expression by the transcription factor NF-κB.^[2][3] He completed his Internal Medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Career

Nabel joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1987, where he led a research laboratory on infectious diseases and cancer immunotherapy. He served as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute until 1999,^[4] researching transcriptional regulation of cell and viral gene expression, and viral vectors in gene therapy.^[5] He also held the title of Sewell Professor of Internal Medicine and Biological Chemistry.

In 1999, Nabel joined the NIH in Washington, D.C. to help establish a vaccine research program. He served as the founding director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases within the NIH, and subsequently as a senior investigator with tenure. His work involved laboratory research and clinical trials, including over 100 clinical studies conducted in the United States, Europe, and Africa, involving candidates for SARS, Chikungunya, universal influenza, and Ebola vaccines.^[6]

Nabel moved to Sanofi in 2012, serving as chief scientific officer and senior vice president. He oversaw the Breakthrough Lab, which developed tri-specific antibodies that are now in development for use to neutralize HIV.^[7] He also managed the Sanofi global research and development portfolio.

Nabel co-founded ModeX Therapeutics in 2020.^[8] In May 2022, ModeX Therapeutics was acquired by OPKO Health.^[9] He currently serves as president and CEO of ModeX Therapeutics.

Biomedical research

At the University of Michigan, Nabel's basic research investigated gene transfer,^[10] basic mechanisms of HIV gene regulation, and NF-κB transcriptional control.^[11][12]

As founding director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC), Nabel contributed to research on neutralizing antibodies. Ebola research utilizing molecular immunology and molecular virology techniques identified genes critical for Ebola virus replication and assembly. The results demonstrated that a gene-based prime–boost vaccination strategy stimulates both cellular and humoral immune responses. This work led to the development of a vaccine that was tested in non-human primates,^{[13][14][15][16]} and helped define the immune mechanisms of protection, guiding further development and trials in Africa. This work provided a conceptual basis for the VSV vaccine.

A vaccine effective in primates against the Chikungunya virus was also developed at the VRC.^[17] Research by Nabel's team utilizing a structure-based approach to vaccine design revealed broadly protective human immune responses to HIV.^[18] This led to the discovery of broadly neutralizing antibodies to the highly conserved CD4 binding site of HIV that are now in human efficacy trials in Africa.^[19] His team's research also contributed to advancing novel SARS^[20] and pandemic influenza^[21][22] vaccine candidates into clinical trials, as well as identifying potential vaccine candidates against encephalitis-causing viruses and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).^[23].

At Sanofi, Nabel's work included the development of an antibody platform capable of recognizing three targets in a single protein, tri-specific antibodies, now under evaluation for the treatment and prevention of AIDS and cancer.^[24][25]

Awards

Nabel's honors include the Amgen Scientific Achievement Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,^[26] The Health and Human Services Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service, the Geoffrey Beene Foundation Builders of Science Award from Research America, and the James Tolbert Shipley Prize for Research at Harvard Medical School.^[26] He received an honorary degree from the University of London, as well as the U.S. Army Medical Department’s Order of Military Medical Merit. Nabel is an elected fellow of the Association of American Physicians, the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, and the AAAS. Nabel was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 1992 and the National Academy of Medicine in 1998.

Nabel served as the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Keystone Symposia^[27] from 2017 to 2019. He was a Council Delegate to the AAAS, Medical Sciences Section from 1997 to 2002, and served as the editor for the Journal of Virology from 1995 to 2005.

Selected publications

See Google Scholar for citation information.

• Nabel, Gary; Baltimore, David (1987-04-22). "An inducible transcription factor activates expression of human immunodeficiency virus in T cells". Nature. 326 (6114): 711–713. Bibcode:1987Natur.326..711N. doi:10.1038/326711a0. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 3031512. S2CID 4317942.
• Osborn, L.; Kunkel, S.; Nabel, G. J. (1989-04-01). "Tumor necrosis factor alpha and interleukin 1 stimulate the human immunodeficiency virus enhancer by activation of the nuclear factor kappa B". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 86 (7): 2336–2340. Bibcode:1989PNAS...86.2336O. doi:10.1073/pnas.86.7.2336. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 286907. PMID 2494664.
• Nabel, G. J.; Nabel, E. G.; Yang, Z. Y.; Fox, B. A.; Plautz, G. E.; Gao, X.; Huang, L.; Shu, S.; Gordon, D.; Chang, A. E. (1993-12-01). "Direct gene transfer with DNA-liposome complexes in melanoma: expression, biologic activity, and lack of toxicity in humans". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 90 (23): 11307–11311. Bibcode:1993PNAS...9011307N. doi:10.1073/pnas.90.23.11307. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 47971. PMID 8248244.
• Wu, Xueling; Yang, Zhi-Yong; Li, Yuxing; Hogerkorp, Carl-Magnus; Schief, William R.; Seaman, Michael S.; Zhou, Tongqing; Schmidt, Stephen D.; Wu, Lan; Xu, Ling; Longo, Nancy S.; McKee, Krisha; O’Dell, Sijy; Louder, Mark K.; Wycuff, Diane L.; Feng, Yu; Nason, Martha; Doria-Rose, Nicole; Connors, Mark; Kwong, Peter D.; Roederer, Mario; Wyatt, Richard T.; Nabel, Gary J.; Mascola, John R. (2010-08-13). "Rational Design of Envelope Identifies Broadly Neutralizing Human Monoclonal Antibodies to HIV-1". Science. 329 (5993): 856–861. Bibcode:2010Sci...329..856W. doi:10.1126/science.1187659. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 2965066. PMID 20616233.