Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS
608-1081 Burrard St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 1Y6
Dr. Anita Howe is Scientific Lead for Hepatitis C at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE), Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Howe’s primary research interests are antiviral drugs and drug resistance. At BC-CfE, Dr. Howe and her team have developed a Next Generation Sequencing platform providing hepatitis C Virus resistance testing for hospitals and physicians throughout Canada. Recently, Dr. Howe has initiated an international collaboration to build an HCV resistance database.
Dr. Howe has proven track record in the pharmaceutical industry. Her research activities encompassed many aspects of drug discovery and clinical development. Prior to coming to Vancouver, Dr. Howe was the Hepatitis C Franchise Lead at Merck, Kenilworth, NJ, where she played a major role in the successful development and launch of several HCV antivirals, including boceprevir, the first approved HCV protease inhibitor; vaniprevir, an HCV protease inhibitor approved and marketed in Japan; and the more recently approved grazoprevir and elbasvir. Prior to her appointment at Merck, Dr. Howe worked for Janssen Pharmaceuticals in Belgium, where she was Director, Early Development providing integrative strategies for clinical development and commercialization of several HIV and HCV compounds. Dr. Howe has a strong interest in basic science. Her research in Drug Discovery at Wyeth (now Pfzier) has led to the identification of the first HCV polymerase investigational molecule being evaluated in humans.
Dr. Howe received her Ph.D. degree in Medical Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Alberta, Canada where she studied the mechanism of action of a nucleoside inhibitor for hepatitis B virus. She continued her post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard Medical School, where she studied the role of HIV in T-cell signaling and AIDS development.
