Scientist Warner Greene Receives Washington University School of Medicine Alumni Award

Warner C. Greene, MD, PhD — who directs virology and immunology research at the UCSF-affiliated Gladstone Institutes — has won the 2012 Alumni Achievement Award from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (WUSTL).

Warner C. Greene, MD, PhD

This prestigious award acknowledges outstanding personal achievement and professional accomplishments, with a particular dedication to the Washington University Medical Center. Greene trained in the Medical Scientist Training Program at WUSTL, considered to be one of the finest physician-scientist training programs in the United States.

“It is an honor and a pleasure to receive this award,” said Greene, who is also a senior investigator at Gladstone and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “It is indeed very gratifying to be recognized by my alma mater.”

Other recipients of this year’s Alumni Achievement Award include Keith Bridwell, MD; Gary Rachelefsky, MD and Pejman Salimpour, MD.

Under Greene’s direction, virology and immunology research at Gladstone takes a multidisciplinary approach to fighting HIV/AIDS — which remains a global scourge, with more than 30 million people worldwide living with HIV. He studies the molecular mechanisms that underlie HIV infection. Recently, Greene’s lab identified human protein fragments in semen that enhance the ability of HIV to infect new cells — a discovery that one day could help stem the global spread of this deadly pathogen.

Earlier this month, Greene was also honored with the 2012 Distinguished Research Career Award from the Ohio State University Center for Retrovirus Research. This award pays tribute to the career of a scientist working in the field of retrovirology. Greene was recognized for his substantial body of work on the molecular biology, immunology and pathogenesis of HIV-1 and HTLV-1.

“We are delighted that Greene is being acknowledged for his work to overcome one of the world’s most devastating diseases,” said R. Sanders Williams, MD, president of Gladstone. “These honors are highly deserved and speak both to his high accomplishments and his dedication to patients.”

A widely recognized expert in virology and immunology, Greene is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. He is also the president of the Accordia Global Health Foundation, whose mission is to build alliances to fight infectious disease in Africa.

Greene also serves as co-director of the UCSF-GIVI Center for AIDS Research and is a member of the executive committees of the AIDS Research Institute and the Biomedical Sciences graduate program at UCSF. He is the author of more than 330 scientific papers and has been recognized as one of the 100 Most Cited Scientists in the world.

Before joining Gladstone in 1991 as the Founding Director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, Greene served as a Senior Investigator at the National Cancer Institute and a Professor of Medicine and Howard Hughes Investigator at Duke University Medical Center. 

Greene earned a bachelor’s degree at Stanford University and an MD/ PhD at the Washington University School of Medicine. He completed his internship and residency training in Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard.

Gladstone is an independent and nonprofit biomedical-research organization dedicated to accelerating the pace of scientific discovery and innovation to prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological diseases.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.

Photo by Chris Goodfellow/Gladstone Institutes