Hildegund Ertl

Hildegund C. J. Ertl received her MD ad Dr in Medicine in 1977 from the University of Göttingen, Germany. She received her postdoctoral training from 1978-1980 at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Department of Microbiology, Canberra, Australia and in 1981 (Jan.-July) from the  University of Minnesota, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Minneapolis, MN. From 1982-1987 she served as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. She joined the Wistar Institute Philadelphia, PA in 1987 as an Associated Professor and in 1996 was promoted to the position of Professor. She is a viral immunologist by training and research in her laboratory centers on developing vaccines for viral and parasitic diseases and cancer. Projects fall into three broad categories: (1) prophylactic vaccines to HIV-1, and  rabies virus; vaccines that were developed by these projects are currently undergoing clinical testing; (2) Therapeutic vaccines against chronic infections with hepatitis B virus or human papillomavirus (3) Immune responses to gene transfer vehicles. i.e., adeno-associated viral vectors, that impede long-term successes of gene therapy. She has published >250 papers, founded the Vaccine Center at the Wistar Institute, served for several years as the Program Leader of the Immunology Program at the Wistar Institute, was for 15 years the Director of a WHO reference center for rabies virus, served for 2 terms on the NIH’s Recombinant DNA Advisory Board, serves as a consultant to several Gene Therapy companies and is co-founder of a biotechnology company called Virion Therapeutics.