By the time Aneesh Kapur enrolled at Duke, he was already captivated by public health issues. Kapur, a sophomore from Potomac, Md., knew that someday he would venture abroad to alleviate suffering from malaria, HIV and other chronic diseases. But just a few weeks after starting a freshman genomics program, Kapur realized he did not need to wait for the end of college to start addressing global health concerns.
Following his freshman year, Kapur landed a summer internship doing preliminary research for an HIV/AIDS vaccine through Duke’s Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. The lab where he worked is part of the largest international project addressing the international AIDS crisis, and Kapur was able to apply his basic knowledge of biology to a project that examined variants in the HIV genome.
The genomics questions studied in the lab were only a small piece of vaccine development, and frequently the science gave rise to more questions than answers about the disease.
“It was amazing how quickly Aneesh could grasp what we were doing, why were doing it and why it was important,” laboratory director Kevin Shianna said. “He understood the big picture and the larger goals of our HIV studies ”
Kapur soon realized it could take many years before a viable vaccine is developed, and searched for a chance to make a more immediate difference. “I’ve always been interested in the biological and medical aspects of HIV, but it doesn’t mean anything to me until I can see it in a community,” he said.
His own family came from India, where HIV is a taboo topic and where some health professionals still lack knowledge about how the virus is transmitted. “I figured that in the United States there would always be people more qualified who could help, but whatever knowledge I have here from basic classes can help people a lot in a place like India,” Kapur said.
With assistance from Kathryn Whetten, associate professor of public policy studies, Kapur and two classmates have reached out to the New Delhi-based Sahara House, a non-profit drug rehabilitation program. The students will spend this semester developing protocol for collecting research data among Sahara House’s clients, many of whom are HIV-positive. They will spend their summer in India, implementing their work and creating an HIV-awareness curriculum.
The opportunities to work on two separate fronts of HIV research have helped Kapur shape his career plans. He now plans to get a medical degree to better connect the scientific and policy aspects of global health work.
“We have the resources at Duke and through NIH and elsewhere so we can do the science work here, but then we still can go there and work in the field, too,” he said. “Doing both the lab work and the work in India helped me appreciate how the science can help out.”