Biographical Sketch
Carl Alving, M.D.
Dr. Alving has been a research investigator at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in Silver Spring, Maryland, since 1970. His education and training include a B.S. from Haverford College; an M.D. from University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; an internship and residency in medicine and a fellowship in pharmacology at Barnes Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis. He served on active duty in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1970–2000, and retired as a colonel. He was Chief of the Department of Membrane Biochemistry at WRAIR from 1978 to 2004. As a civil service employee he is currently Chief of the Department of Vaccine Production and Delivery in the Division of Retrovirology at WRAIR. He is also an adjunct professor of microbiology and immunology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD.
He developed an early successful application of liposomes as drug carriers for treatment of leishmaniasis. He is the co-inventor of the technique of needle-free transcutaneous immunization, a technology that is being commercially developed for vaccination by skin patch. He has been an author or coauthor on approximately 260 scientific publications (185 peer-reviewed papers) in the fields of adjuvants, complement, lipid biochemistry and immunology, and liposomes as drug carriers and carriers of vaccines, and he sits on numerous editorial boards. He has created adjuvants for many types of experimental vaccines, including vaccines to malaria, HIV, biological threat agents, and prostate and intestinal cancer. He holds 23 issued U.S. patents. His current research interests are focused on the role of lipids in HIV-1 infection, and the role that lipids may play in the development of neutralizing antibodies to HIV-1.
Dr. Alving is a member of the American Association of Immunologists, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and American Society for Microbiology. He was a founding member of the International Endotoxin Society. He was a founding member and is currently a director of the International Liposome Society, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected chairman of the 5th Gordon Research Conference on Drug Carriers in Biology and Medicine. In recognition of his numerous contributions to the liposome field, he was the 3rd recipient of the Alec Bangham Award for lifetime contributions to liposome research.