VANCOUVER, BC – The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) announced Dr. Zabrina Brumme has been appointed Director of Canada’s leading HIV laboratory program. . Dr. Brumme will be on secondment from her position as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University (SFU), where she additionally holds a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar award.
“The BC-CfE continues to lead progress in HIV research in BC and around the world, in a bid to eliminate this global epidemic through Treatment as Prevention¨, while expanding its research in other infectious diseases like hepatitis C,” said Dr. Julio Montaner, Director of the BC-CfE. “Dr. Brumme shares this commitment and is well positioned to lead and expand the BC-CfE’s Laboratory Program, bringing highly specialized knowledge, coupled with remarkable leadership as a mentor to other researchers.”
Under Dr. Brumme’s leadership, the BC-CfE Laboratory Program will continue to investigate HIV at a molecular level, contributing to advancing personalized medicine, phylogenetics, vaccine and cure research. The BC-CfE Laboratory Program was the first in the world to offer routine HIV drug resistance testing for people diagnosed with HIV, helping to tailor treatment and improve health outcomes. As a cutting-edge institution, the BC-CfE lab uses phylogenetics, the mapping of HIV genome data, to identify HIV transmission patterns or clusters.
“The Faculty of Health Sciences is fully supportive of Dr. Brumme’s secondment as Laboratory Director, which recognizes the excellence of her HIV and immunology research,” said Dr. Tania Bubela, SFU Professor and Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences. “Dr. Brumme’s career progression and leadership is an inspiration for our students, and we look forward to strengthening our research and training partnerships with the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.”
Recently, Dr. Brumme led unprecedented research showing HIV strains being transmitted widely in Saskatchewan had mutated, potentially leading to faster progression to AIDS-defining illnesses. The BC-CfE is expanding this knowledge to other infectious diseases like hepatitis C.