Nancy Sullivan, Venetia Zachariou Installed as Inaugural Edward Avedisian Professors

Nancy Sullivan, ScD, director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, and Venetia (Vanna) Zachariou, PhD, chair of pharmacology, physiology & biophysics, were installed on April 20 as the inaugural recipients of Edward Avedisian Professorships. The endowed chairs were funded out of the historic $100 million gift by the late Edward Avedisian.

“I believe they are most worthy inaugural Edward Avedisian Professors, and congratulate them,” Avedisian’s wife Pamela told a hybrid audience at the ceremony held in Hiebert Lounge that included faculty, students, friends and members of the Sullivan and Zachariou families.

Edward Avedisian (CAS’59,’61) was a longtime musician with the Boston Pops and Boston Ballet Orchestra. A highly successful investor, he quietly amassed a fortune and made donations to educational programs and buildings in his ancestral country of Armenia, as well as throughout Rhode Island and at the University, which named the medical school the Aram V. Chobanian & Edward Avedisian School of Medicine to honor him and childhood friend Aram Chobanian, MD, former BU president and medical school dean emeritus. Chobanian attended the ceremony online.

Twenty-five percent of the gift is dedicated to funding endowed professorships.

Sullivan, who also is a professor of microbiology and biology, came to BU from the National Institutes of Health, where she was chief of the Biodefense Research Section at the Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). An international leader in filovirus vaccines and hemorrhagic fever virus immunology, she and her team were the first to demonstrate Ebola vaccine protection in primates and later developed Marburg and Sudan vaccines that are currently in Phase 2 human trials, in addition to a monoclonal antibody for Ebola that resulted in nearly 90% survival rate.

Sullivan thanked family, friends and mentors. She said that similar to SARS CoV-2, there are new viruses, still unknown and unstudied, that exist in animal reservoirs around the world.

Projecting a slide showing researchers in “space suits” that are worn while studying highly infectious emerging diseases in the highest-level containment labs at the NEIDL, Sullivan said, “we need to do that so that we can, ahead of time, develop therapies and vaccines for these viruses that we know are coming.”

Joseph Mizgerd, ScD, professor of medicine and the inaugural Jerome S. Brody, MD, Professor of Pulmonary Medicine, said he is both friend and fan of Sullivan, which began when they were both getting their doctorates at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“I learned so much from her,” said Mizgerd. “I’m so glad to welcome Nancy to BU and congratulate her on this wonderful professorship,”

Introducing Zachariou, Karen Antman, MD, Medical Campus provost and dean of the medical school, cited her work investigating chronic pain states and addiction at the cellular level and her work to develop novel therapeutics for the management of chronic pain by targeting novel genes and intracellular pathways. Zachariou joined BU in November 2022 from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, where she was professor of neuroscience and pharmacological sciences.

“Twenty percent of the American population suffers from very severe chronic pain conditions such as peripheral neuropathy, fibromyalgia, chronic migraines, or chronic fatigue syndrome,” said Zachariou. “It’s important to develop novel approaches to break this vicious cycle of chronic pain, instead of simply suppressing symptoms”

Given the ravages of a national opioid epidemic, one of her research goals is to develop alternatives to opioids as pain relievers.

“I’ve been extremely lucky to be surrounded by amazing trainees and colleagues. We’ve discovered new treatment targets. But more importantly, we connected with other scientists all over the world,” said Zachariou.

Alex Serafini, a postdoc in BU’s pharmacology, physiology & biophysics department, studied under Zachariou at the Icahn School of Medicine as an MD/PhD student. He told the audience that Zachariou was an excellent mentor.

“She forces people to become the best scientist they can be, Serafini said.