About the Meeting

The Annual International Meeting of the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) had its start in the mid-1970s when a small gathering of collaborators began to assemble under the leadership of Dr. Robert C. Gallo, then Chief of the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. Long before the 1996 establishment of IHV, the meeting was expanded to include discussions around tumor cell biology, retrovirology, and HIV/AIDS, among others. The meeting achieved rapid growth and even greater interest after the 1980 discovery of the first human retrovirus, HTLV-I, by Gallo and his colleagues.

When the University of Maryland recruited Gallo, Bill Blattner (National Cancer Institute) and Bob Redfield (Walter Reed Army Hospital) to create a bench-to-bedside Institute, the meeting followed and is now associated with the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Although the annual meeting has most regularly convened in Baltimore, Maryland, IHV welcomes collaboration abroad in co-hosting the event. In 2010, the meeting was moved to Italy, its first international venue, where it enjoyed tremendous success in a beautiful location on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Our second international venue, in 2013, was in Moscow, Russian Federation and was held in conjunction with the first ever Moscow International Virology Week. Attendees not only enjoyed a week of stimulating and informative presentations, they also experienced, first hand, this city of deep historical significance and home to stunning architecture, cultural tradition, and the Russian Federation Capitol.