Anne Searls De Groot

Anne Searls De Groot is an Immunologist and entrepreneur . She is the co-founder and CEO/CSO of the immunoinformatics company EpiVax.

De Groot also founded and directs the Institute for Immunology and Informatics at the University of Rhode Island, the GAIA Vaccine Foundation and the Clinica Esperanza (Hope Clinic). She currently teaches as a research professor of biotechnology at the University of Rhode Island.

Education

Dr. Anne De Groot graduated from Smith College in 1978 with a BA and from the Pritzker School of Medicine at University of Chicago in 1983 with an MD. She completed her residency in internal medicine at Tufts New England Medical Center and completed fellowships in Parasitology and Vaccine Research at the NIH and in Infectious Disease at the Tufts New England Medical Center. De Groot is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease. She currently practices at the Clinica Esperanza (Hope Clinic), a free clinic for Rhode Island residents who do not have health insurance.

Career

Annie De Groot and Bill Martin (COO/CIO EpiVax) founded EpiVax in 1998 to use bioinformatics to design epitope-driven vaccines and expanded to offer immunogenicity screening services for protein therapeutics. De Groot, Martin and Dr. Leonard Moise discovered regulatory T cell epitopes, called “Tregitopes”, that are shown to activate regulatory T cells and suppress the immune response.

Annie has also contributed to the Yale HIV in Prison program and Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Framingham, providing medical treatment to inmates, founded the GAIA Vaccine Foundation for improving global AIDS treatment, and founded a free clinic in Rhode Island, Clinica Esperanza. Her current work at the Clinica Esperanza includes the nurse-run CHEER Clinic, a walk in clinic pilot program that serves as an alternative to non-urgent ER visits.

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