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FACILITATED DIFFUSION•seeCELL MEMBRANE
TRANSPORTFFauci, Anthony S.AUCI, ANTHONYS.(1940- )
American immunologistEarly in his career, Anthony S. Fauci carried out both basic
and clinical research in immunologyand infectious diseases.
Since 1981, Fauci’s research has been focused on the mecha-
nisms of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus(HIV), which
causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). His
work has lead to breakthroughs in understanding the virus’s
progress, especially during the latency period between infec-
tion and fulminant AIDS. As director of both the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the
Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health
(NIH), Fauci is involved with much of the AIDS research per-
formed in the United States and is responsible for supervising
the investigation of the disease mechanism and the develop-
ment of vaccines and drug therapy.
Anthony Stephen Fauci was born on December 24,
1940, in Brooklyn, New York, to Stephen A. Fauci, a pharma-
cist, and Eugenia A. Fauci, a homemaker. He attended a Jesuit
high school in Manhattan where he had a successful academic
and athletic career. After high school, Fauci entered Holy
Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, as a premedical
student, graduating with a B.A. in 1962. He then attended
Cornell University Medical School, from which he received
his medical degree in 1966, and where he completed both his
internship and residency.
In 1968, Fauci became a clinical associate in the
Laboratory of Clinical Investigation of NIAID, one of the
eleven institutes that comprise the NIH. Except for one year
spent at the New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center as
chief resident, he has remained at the NIH throughout his
career. His earliest studies focused on the functioning of thehuman immune systemand how infectious diseases impact
the system. As a senior staff fellow at NIAID, Fauci and two
other researchers delineated the mechanism of Wegener’s
granulomatosis, a relatively rare and fatal immune disease
involving the inflammationof blood vessels and organs. By
1971, Fauci had developed a drug regimen for Wegener’s
granulomatosis that is 95% percent effective. He also found
effective treatments for lymphomatoid granulomatosis and
polyarteritis nodosa, two other immune diseases.
In 1972, Fauci became a senior investigator at NIAID
and two years later he was named head of the Clinical
Physiology Section. In 1977, Fauci was appointed deputy clin-
ical director of NIAID. Fauci shifted the focus of the
Laboratory of Clinical Infection at NIAID towards investigat-
ing the nature of AIDS in the early 1980s. It was in Fauci’s lab
the type of defect that occurs in the T4 helper cells (the
immune cells) and enables AIDS to be fatal was demonstrated.
Fauci also orchestrated early therapeutic techniques, including
bone-marrow transplants, in an attempt to save AIDS patients.
In 1984, Fauci became the director of NIAID, and the follow-
ing year the coordinator of all AIDS research at NIH. He has
worked not only against the disease but also against govern-
mental indifference to AIDS, winning larger and larger budg-
ets for AIDS research. When the Office of AIDS Research at
NIH was founded in 1988, Fauci was made director; he also
decided to remain the director of NIAID. Fauci and his
research teams have developed a three-fold battle plan against
AIDS: researching the mechanism of HIV, developing and
testing drug therapies, and creating an AIDS vaccine.
In 1993, Fauci and his team at NIH disproved the theory
that HIV remains dormant for approximately ten years after the
initial infection, showing instead that the virus attacks the
lymph nodes and reproduces itself in white blood cells known
as CD4 cells. This discovery could lead to new and radical
approaches in the early treatment of HIV-positive patients.
Earlier discoveries that Fauci and his lab are responsible for
include the 1987 finding that a protein substance known as
cytokine may be responsible for triggering full-blown AIDSwomi_F 5/6/03 2:15 PM Page 215