Charles R. Wira PhD

Dr. Wira is actively involved in a Dartmouth Medical School Fogarty Grant that is working with colleagues at Dartmouth and the University of Muhimbili in Tanzania to bring scientists to Dartmouth for training in HIV-related Mucosal Immunology. He also sits on the board of directors of an NGO at the University of Nairobi, Kenya that focuses on improving women's health against a spectrum of diseases including AIDS. He is the past Secretary of the American Society of Reproductive Immunology and has served as Councilor for ASRI from 1998-2006. Dr. Wira is presently the Secretary General of ISIR and the President-Elect of ASRI (2008-2009). Most recently, he has received a 5-year NIH grant to understand the role that human FRT immune cells play in protection against the heterosexual transmission of HIV-1.

Dr. Wira's research is at the interface of the endocrine and immune systems should increase the presently limited knowledge of immune protection in women and should provide basic information essential for the prevention and control of cancers in the reproductive tract, local infection in the genital mucosa, for management of sexually transmitted diseases including the heterosexual transmission of HIV-1 and for autoimmune diseases. Further, these studies relate to endogenous protective immunity and to the development and evaluation of candidate vaccines and microbicides, and the role of mucosal immunity in natural and vaccine-induced protection against HIV and tuberculosis.

Dr. Wira's research focuses on how female sex hormones influence immunity in the female reproductive tract using animal models and human tissues. Dr. Wira has been funded by NIH for the past 35 yrs, has published approximately 160 research papers, and serves as editor of several scientific journals. He has received numerous awards including a National Institutes of Health Merit Award, which is awarded to approximately 0.1% of scientists by NIH. He is also the recipient of the Distinguished Investigator Award in Reproductive Immunology by the American Society of Reproductive Immunology (ASRI). As Principal Investigator of an NIH-funded Program Project grants for the past 14 years, he heads a major collaborative effort at Dartmouth Medical School to characterize immune functions in the Fallopian tube, uterus, cervix, and vagina and to define the roles of sex hormones in mucosal immune regulation.