.jpg "Edsel Maurice Salvana, MD photo")
Director and Professor
Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, National Institutes of Health, University of the Philippines, Philippines
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
Edsel Maurice T. Salvana, MD, DTM&H, FPCP, FIDSA received his medical degree from the University of the Philippines College of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and did his fellowship in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He is currently a Research Professor and the Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the Philippines’ National Institutes of Health. He is also adjunct faculty for Global Health at the University of Pittsburgh.
Among his many awards are Outstanding Young Scientist from the National Academy of Science and Technology, the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World award from JCI International, and a Young Physician Leader Award from the Interacademy Medical Panel of the World Academy of Sciences. He was chosen as a TED Fellow in 2017 and as a Senior TED Fellow in 2020. He was awarded the Order of Lapu-Lapu, Rank of Magalong by the President of the
Philippines for his invaluable life-saving contributions as a senior scientific adviser of the national COVID-19 pandemic response.
Dr. Salvana’s research interests include HIV molecular epidemiology and drug resistance. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book
chapters. His pioneering work in HIV in the Philippines identified a shift in the predominant clade from subtype B to CRF01_AE as a major factor in one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the world. He is currently working on near-point of care tests for HIV drug resistance using the MinION platform. He is among the scientists that discovered the P.3 SARS-COV-2 lineage (formerly variant of interest Theta) in the Philippines.
Dr. Salvana writes a weekly column entitled “Clinical Matters” for the Manila Bulletin which offers scientific perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic.