Duke University was awarded $139 million over seven years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to fund HIV vaccine research, The News Observer reports. The money will create a Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology-Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID), which will collaborate with the Scripps Research Institute (SRI), a large, independent, nonprofit biomedical research organization. The research will focus on neutralizing antibodies—proteins that weed out intruders such as viruses and bacteria—which may be the key to an effective HIV vaccine. The Duke center will also coordinate with partners from Oxford University in England, the University of Pennsylvania, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Harvard University.

To read the News Observer article, click here.