On Sept. 3, 2014, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) announced it had been awarded a $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to advance work on a promising vaccine candidate that may someday prevent or cure infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The grant, awarded to a team of scientists at OHSU’s Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute led by Louis Picker, M.D., was among the largest philanthropic grants OHSU had ever received.