PR COMPREHENSIVE CTR FOR HIV DISPARITIES: PSM: LAB CORE

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. SPECIFIC AIMS: The specific aims of the core laboratory activity remain virtually unchanged. In addition, the laboratory submitted a proposal to be a part of laboratory core under the new RCMI Clinical and Translational Research (RCTR) program, support for which was applied through the consortium of the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences campus (San Juan), Universidad Central del Caribe (UCC; Bayamon) and Ponce School of Medicine (PSM, Ponce). This laboratory core will provide virtually the same types of HIV related testing for clinical evaluation of patients enrolled in the center's actively funded or emerging projects. Education of the user population on the utility of tests being provided will be one of the newly added priority areas. The following tests are implemented through the core. 1. HIV and HCV ELISA and HIV Western blot analyses. 2. Flow cytometric analysis of CD4 T cell enumeration, intracytoplastic cytokine production by T cell subsets and quantification of extra-cellularly produced cytokines-chemokines. 3. HIV and HCV viral load assessment by Roche Amplicor procedures. 4. HCV Genotyping by the line-probe assay (LIPA). 5. HIV drug resistance mutation analysis (genotyping) by the Siemens TruGene and in-house procedures. Both procedures have been biannually proficiency tested by VQA and accredited by the WHO HIV ResNet since 2008. 6. HIV coreceptor requirement analysis (CCR5 vs. CXCR4). 7. Flow cytometric analysis of HIV infected T cells. 8. Human papillomavirus (HPV) genotyping by the Roche HPV DNA Array.