CORE--CLINICAL INVESTIGATIONS

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The UCLA CFAR Clinical Investigations Core is designed to facilitate interactions between clinical HIV infection and its related malignant complications. The core utilizes the expertise of the director in the pathogenesis of Kaposi sarcoma and immune based therapy and accesses the clinical materials generated from clinical trials of patients with immune modulating agents such as interferons, interleukin-2, interleukin-4, and interleukin-12 trials. By facilitating a close interface between basic scientists and clinicians, cost effective and productive studies often result. The core provides four basic services: 1. logistical support for the scientists and basic researchers that further our understanding of the immunopathogenesis of collection of clinical specimens from patients including serum, plasma, spinal fluid and other non-malignant body fluids. 2. access to non-malignant stored clinical specimens including access to unique clinical specimens from patients on immune modulator or gene therapy trials for retrospective studies. 3. consultative support including assistance with applications to the institutional review board for prospective specimens, and 4. maintains a computerize data base of existing specimens for easy retrieval. The core currently has over 40,000 specimens available and has correlative clinical information on over 4,000 patients. The core continues to acquire over 1,000 new samples per year. In 1996, eight investigators processed or obtained 5,230 samples from the core. The core provides the bulk of its services on a re-charge basis providing users with a core facility that is the most cost effective approach for storage, processing and retrieval of stored specimens. It is hoped that by encouraging basic scientists to perform studies using clinical materials, in vitro observations can be rapidly translated into clinical trials and, ideally improved therapy for HIV. This core does not provide clinical trials support.