A Wright State University researcher has been named to a prestigious committee that since the 1970s has reviewed potentially risky research projects, which now focus on curing diseases through human gene transfer.

Dawn Wooley this week will attend her first meeting of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, which reports to the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis S. Collins.

Recombinant DNA brings together genetic materials from multiple sources — so it would not otherwise exist. It is found in insect-resistant crops, the hepatitis B vaccine and in some cutting-edge treatments of cancer, said Wooley, who has taught and conducted research on viruses at Wright State since 1995. She works in the Department of Neuroscience, Cell Biology, and Physiology at Wright State’s Boonshoft School of Medicine.

“The types of therapies that we’re designing are very new. We’re engineering viruses in ways that they would not appear in nature,” she said. “And so, because of that, you can try and think of all the things that might happen. And sometimes there are unforeseen things. What we’re trying to do is review everything in-depth to try to prevent some of those occurrences or any of those occurrences.”

The treatments could potentially be harmful to the patient, become contagious or be inherited, Wooley said. Their safety must be reviewed to protect patients’ lives and because serious outcomes on one project can slow advancements in an entire field, she said.

Wooley was nominated to serve on the committee by a member of the NIH who had heard her lecture, she said.

Her selection is a distinction for Wright State, she said. It is also an opportunity for Wooley, who is an expert in viruses and biosafety, to learn more about cutting-edge therapies.

“It should help me to think about my own research in a different way,” said Wooley, who earned a Ph.D. in virology at Harvard University, where she studied the AIDS virus. She later performed post-doctoral training at the University of Wisconsin Medical School with the late Nobel Laureate and geneticist Howard Temin.

Wooley, who earned her bachelor’s degree in microbiology at the Pennsylvania State University, is currently researching how HIV mutates and changes over time. She is also examining how HIV causes disease and affects a certain white blood cell. Additionally, she has funding to study the safety of viral vectors and is part of a funded research project aiming to ultimately design a gene therapy for HIV using a specific virus.