Dr. Terri Creagh, Director of Research, began her career in the laboratory of Dr. Gertrude Elion, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Medicine.  In Dr. Elion’s laboratory, Dr. Creagh participated in the discovery and development of new immunologics and antiviral drugs.  The two most important of these drugs was acyclovir (the first antiviral drug developed to treat herpesvirus infections) and zidovudine (then called AZT), the first drug developed to treat HIV/AIDS.  When acyclovir moved into clinical trials, Dr. Creagh oversaw the clinical trials for the oral formulation of the drug.

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic started to intensify in the U.S., Dr. Creagh began working on the development of zidovudine (ZDV).  The first double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial of ZDV was stopped in September 1986.  At that time, the FDA allowed the manufacturer to make ZDV available free-of-charge to people with AIDS while FDA reviewed the licensing application for the drug.  Dr. Creagh designed, supervised, and analyzed data from the program that provided the drug to patients.  Following publication of data from this compassionate use protocol in 1988, FDA used the ZDV experience to develop Treatment IND regulations governing the pre-licensing expanded access of experimental drugs to patients in the United States.

Dr. Creagh continued to study the clinical epidemiology of HIV until 1991, when she became Director of Research for the AIDS Research Consortium.  Since 1996, she has served as clinical research consultant to universities, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies.  She served on the HIV Surrogate Marker Collaborative Group that developed guidelines for the use of CD4+ and viral load as surrogate markers for antiretroviral clinical efficacy.

Dr. Creagh has been a member of the The Well Project’s Women’s Research Initiative on HIV/AIDS since its inception.  She is widely published in the area of antiviral chemotherapy and pharmacoepidemiology.