Developmental Core

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Five years ago, the Tufts Nutrition Collaborative - Center for Drug Abuse and AIDS Research (TNC-CDAAR) was funded by NIDA as just one of two CDAAR's in the nation. The CDAARs were charged with the following mission: to foster a collaborative approach to drug abuse and addiction research; to enable studies that would not occur without the climate, facilities, and resources that a research center can uniquely provide; to serve as a resource to attract established and promising investigators into drug abuse research; and to provide opportunities for research training, career development, and mentoring. The TNC-CDAAR was formed as a partnership between three East Coast Institutions (Tufts, Brown and Johns Hopkins) with a specific focus on studying nutritional and metabolic disorders among HIV-positive and HIV-negative drug users. Over the past five years, we have expanded the TNC-CDAAR to include collaborators from 3 international sites: Argentina, India, and Vietnam. Our major accomplishments, thus far, have been to 1) design and implement several new studies to assess and compare the prevalence and incidence of specific nutritional and metabolic disorders in drug users of different ethnicities, both in the U.S. and abroad; 2) develop training materials, protocols, and manuals for investigators who want to undertake similar studies in their localities; 3) help in the development of new grant proposals in Center-related areas of research; and 4) become a resource center on nutrition and metabolic disorders in drug users. The Center will continue to work to raise awareness of the importance of nutritional and metabolic disorders on outcomes in the drug using population and to encourage investigators to include studies of nutritional and metabolic status in their research in drug using populations. The five Center Cores will continue to work synergistically to provide a multitude of services for Center Members. Specifically, the Developmental Core provides a source of immediate financial support, in conjunction with Core resource support, to attract new and innovative research in the field of nutritional and metabolic abnormalities in HIV-positive and HIV-negative drug users. The purpose of this seed money for pilot projects is to allow investigators to quickly initiate research and generate data that will lead to the submission of more substantial grant applications. It is also a means to encourage investigators in related fields to initiate research in drug users. There is currently research being conducted on the natural history of HIV infection among various substance abusing populations, but few studies that focus specifically on the nutritional, and metabolic complications of HIV infection and drug use in these populations. The goal of this Core is to facilitate and encourage metabolic related research among seasoned investigators who have existing research agendas in drug-using populations as well as to encourage new researchers into this field.