Interview of physician Anna Wald

Anna Wald: the Queen of Herpes

By Graciela Matrajt

“I studied religion; then I wanted to be an anthropologist, but I ended up in medical research and I don't know how that happened,” says Anna Wald, who is often introduced as the Queen of Herpes.

Anna Wald studied in a liberal arts college, Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and majored in religion. Although she took several science classes and did well in them, Anna considered going to graduate school to study anthropology. “Both of my parents were academic physicians and I have always liked science, but I also liked humanities and social sciences and, because I didn't like hanging out with the pre-medical students, I did not take many science courses,” says Anna. But life takes many turns, and often some are opposite to your original plans. Anna went on a walk with one of her professors, who strongly suggested she do something with a more practical application, like medical school. Thinking this was a good idea, Anna completed her science courses at Columbia University and went to Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. She obtained her MD degree in 1985 and went to Boston City Hospital for her internal medicine residency. 

Three years later, toward the end of her residency, Anna didn't have a job lined up. When she was a senior resident, she rotated through the AIDS clinic. Since she trained in inner-city hospitals during the era when HIV first became recognized, she gained clinical expertise in treating patients with AIDS. The director of the clinic obtained a grant to teach community health providers how to test patients for HIV and take care of AIDS patients, and he offered Anna to work with him. She may have become the queen of HIV had she not decided to move to Seattle in 1989 for personal reasons.  

Once in Seattle, Anna was hired by Dr. Ann Collier and Dr. Larry Corey, both faculty at the UW, to work in the AIDS Clinical Trials Unit, performing clinical trials with new AIDS drugs. After two years, Anna started an infectious disease fellowship to gain more training in infectious diseases other than HIV. She went to work with Corey's group on his herpes simplex grant as part of her fellowship, which lasted three years. During those years she did various tasks: she saw patients infected with several viral infections; she performed clinical research and, simultaneously, she took courses toward a Master's in Public Health in Epidemiology, which she obtained in 1994. At that time she had several ongoing projects with Corey; she stayed in his group where she got a faculty position in the Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the UW School of Medicine, with a joint appointment in Epidemiology at the UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine. 

The philosophy in clinical research is to do collaborative work, so Anna has kept working with Corey ever since. Her earlier work was mainly centered on the interaction between HSV (Herpes Simplex Virus) and HIV; then, it turned into all the facets of the herpes simplex virus infection, from the psycho-social aspects of the infection to the testing of drugs to treat and prevent the disease. Anna, as a clinical virologist and the Director of the Virology Research Clinic at UW, is attracted by the interdisciplinary aspects of her research. “Even though Herpes is just one type of infectious disease, and it may look like a narrow subject, the techniques with which I work are very broad,” explains Anna. She works with basic scientists who are elucidating the immune cell interactions with the virus; she works with clinicians to understand why some patients suffer a severe disease while others have a milder disease; she also works with pharmaceutical companies to develop new treatments and new vaccines. Anna also provides a lot of support and information to patients with herpes throughout the country, who email her questions that no one else can answer – unfortunately, she also often does not have the answers. “I get introduced at meetings as the queen of herpes” explains Anna, “and I am happy to have that title.   Because of the breadth of my collaborative work, it does not get boring.”

Anna also teaches a graduate course on vaccines at the School of Public Health. The curriculum encompasses a variety of topics, from how to make a vaccine, the policy making behind vaccines, to the immunological aspects of vaccines. She even invites moms who did not vaccinate their children to come and talk to her class. The course is taught one-quarter per year. “I don't particularly like lecturing but I enjoy very much preparing the material and engaging in discussions with the students” explains Anna. 

Dr. Anna Wald is receiving the Award for Scientific Advancement from AWIS this coming June. The award is to honor the work and advancement she and her group have done on Herpes during all those years. They have pushed forward an understanding of the natural history of Herpes and a method of studying it that is now being used widely by pharmaceutical companies to test new drugs and new vaccines. Indeed, before this method was developed, it was difficult to test drugs against herpes with precision, and understand what the optimal doses are.  The method that Anna and collaborators developed has made these studies much more straightforward. In addition, Anna and collaborators have made significant advancements in the understanding of the HSV-HIV interaction, making the rest of the scientific community aware that this interaction exists and that it is problematic for treating either of the infections. 

Although there are many women in medicine, there are few in virology. What has helped very much Anna to be so successful is that she had Larry Corey as a mentor, who has always been very supportive. She believes that a recipe for success is being flexible and open-minded about what you are going to work on. “Anything can be interesting if you ask the right questions and go in depth to search for the answers” advises Anna. Anna is very persistent and always makes it work, whether in her private life or in her professional one. When she started her faculty life she didn't like writing and she found it hard to put her ideas on paper. “I learned to like to write” admits Anna, who now teaches a scientific writing workshop. Anna has a husband who is also a UW faculty and together they have kids. When I asked her how she manages the work-life balance, Anna said: “Joel and I talk about that it would be nice for us to have a wife”. They have learned to find that balance that is not always evident. 

Anna has been thinking in the things she would like to do next. She recognizes that developing drugs takes a lot of time and that can be very frustrating. When she started her fellowship twenty years ago, there were two drugs being developed for the Herpes infection. But until a few years ago, there was nothing new. “There is a lack of interest in developing new drugs for these viral infections, mainly for commercial reasons” explains Anna. Fortunately, at present there are several pharmaceutical companies developing therapeutic vaccines for HSV-2. As we were talking, the first patient was being vaccinated as part of the early phase of the third clinical trial, to test the third product Anna and collaborators have recently developed, which is aimed to function as a therapeutic vaccine for Herpes. 

Still, what Anna wishes most of all, is to see the development of prophylactic vaccines brought to market before the end of her career. Good luck with those clinical trials and congratulations on the award honoring your hard work, Anna !