By Susan Reslewic, Ph.D.

Noted for its diverse immigrant population and panoramic vistas of the Manhattan skyline, Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood has served as set for historic moments since the birth of the United States. In August 1776, Sunset Park’s topography challenged the Redcoats’ advance against the Rebels in the Battle of Brooklyn. Almost two hundred years later, in 1958, the neighborhood shuttled Elvis Presley from the Brooklyn Army Terminal to his military post in Germany. And just a few months ago, that same Brooklyn Army Terminal became host for the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) AIDS Vaccine Design and Development Laboratory. As the first tenant within the neighborhood’s planned 500,000 square foot bioscience center, the Design Lab has innovation at its core: it is the only facility in the world dedicated solely to the development of an AIDS vaccine.

But why here? And why not before now?

“We looked at lots of spaces within a 50 mile radius,” says Dr. Timothy Zamb, head of the design lab. “There were actually pigeons flying over the columns when we first looked at this site two years ago”. Synergies stemming from sharing a building with other bioscientists, and heavy support from Brooklyn’s SUNY Downstate Medical Center moved the Brooklyn Army Terminal site to the lead. And pigeons aside, Dr. Zamb and colleagues liked the look of the place. “It seemed to fit the image of IAVI as a non-governmental organization”, says Dr. Zamb. Also, the neighborhood’s infamous restaurant rows can’t have hurt.

But with HIV and AIDS having ravaged the world for decades, and total global investment in preventive HIV-vaccine R&D reaching almost $1 B in 2007, what makes now the right time for a lab devoted to AIDS vaccine discovery and development in NYC?

The answer, in part, stems from a perfect storm of factors that make now a great time to propel biotech to the forefront of NYC’s economy, but also, from IAVI’s unique operating model that frees scientific discovery from some of the pressures inherent to academia and industry – pressures that, while designed to ensure accountability in the form of publications or quarterly numbers, can too often thwart true progress by a short-term focus or create needless busy work.

For example, the rigorous and exhaustive experiments necessary for discovering the appropriate vector to deliver the vaccine are not funded by traditional academic grant agencies. However, at the design lab, the scientists are free to take the most thorough and iterative approach to the problem.

However, the research is not confined to the space on the top floor of the Brooklyn Army Terminal; rather, the collaboration with other labs and individuals wraps around the globe. Research consortiums and clinical trial centers exist on five of the seven continents, altering the traditional balance of collaboration and competition toward the former in achieving progress in science. In addition, the organization has taken a unique approach to finding the best ideas – for example, in December, a “$150,000 protein search challenge” was issued through the global innovation marketplace InnoCentive, Inc. The hope is that the challenge of designing a protein that mimics part of HIV, and thus can trigger an immune response, will be met by InnoCentive’s network of 165,000 “Solvers”, very smart people who love solving problems.

If history serves as harbinger, we can be sure of more historic moments to come from this nexus on cutting edge science and organization bubbling in Sunset Park.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initative’s AIDS Vaccine Design and Development Laboratory opened at the Brooklyn Army Terminal on November 12, 2008. The author had the chance to visit the design lab two months after opening, in January 2009. You can learn more about IAVI, and the design lab, here:
www.iavi.org/LabOpening
and more about Innocentive, Inc., here:
www.innocentive.com

Photo captions:
At left, view of the Brooklyn Army Terminal from the waterfront.
At right, scientists Dr. Timothy Zamb and Dr. Stephen Kaminsky by a state-of-the-art 24-color flow cytometer, provided by Becton Dickinson at a reduced rate.