Eric Freed, Ph.D.
Editor’s note: The text for this article was adapted from an e-mail announcement to the Center for Cancer Research community from Robert Wiltrout, Ph.D., on September 8, 2014.
Robert Wiltrout, Ph.D., director, NCI Center for Cancer Research (CCR), recently announced the appointment of Eric Freed, Ph.D., as deputy director of the HIV Drug Resistance Program (HIV DRP). Freed will join Stephen Hughes, Ph.D., director of HIV DRP, in leading this CCR program that focuses on understanding HIV replication and pathogenesis, with the goal of developing more effective strategies for treating HIV infections, and also builds on the existing strength of HIV and retrovirus research within NCI.
“I feel honored to help lead this program, which has a world-wide reputation as a center for ground-breaking HIV and retrovirus research,” Freed said.
Freed obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin?Madison, where he also conducted postdoctoral work. In 1992, he joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), where he worked on a variety of topics relating to virus assembly and entry/post?entry events in the HIV replication cycle. He became a senior investigator at NIAID in 2002.
Freed joined CCR’s HIV DRP in 2003. His research focuses on the molecular aspects of retroviral replication, with an emphasis on HIV?1 assembly, release, and maturation.
In 2010, Freed was selected as an NCI Mentor of Merit for excellence in mentoring and guiding the careers of trainees in cancer research, and he was appointed to the NCI Senior Biomedical Research Service in 2011. He is currently co?chair of the NIH Virology Interest Group and a member of the NIH AIDS Discovery and Development of Therapeutics study section. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and co?director of the University of Maryland Virology Program. He serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals and is editor?in?chief of the open?access journal Viruses.
Freed said he will continue to hold his current position as head, Virus-Cell Interaction Section, HIV DRP.