UNC Center for AIDS Research

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The UNC CFAR is a consortium of three complementary institutions: UNC Chapel Hill, Family Health International (FHI), and Research Triangle Institute (RTI). Over the last seven years our CFAR has grown to serve the diverse needs of our membership and to provide leadership within the institutions. In this renewal application we propose to continue with our previous seven cores and to add two new cores: an Immunology Core and an International Core. With a successful renewal we will greatly increase the institutional support, including new designated, contiguous space and the allocation of new faculty slots. In addition, we will use CFAR funding to create a pool of resources that can be leveraged to promote further hiring of HIV/AIDS researchers. Our CFAR has played a central role in the development of a strategy to identify acute HIV infections in real time, and we now partner with the State of North Carolina to identify such people and enroll them into research protocols. With CFAR support and leadership we have conceptualized new therapeutic strategies to alter the course of the disease in these people, and we will pursue clinical trials in these areas. Our CFAR has a substantial commitment to HIV/AIDS research in the international setting and the new International Core will allow more effective support for that effort. Members of our CFAR have successfully brought an HIV vaccine candidate to human trials, and our new Immunology Core represents an effort to bring broader support to other ongoing vaccine and clinical immunology studies. We have a strong commitment to supporting translational research, with three of our cores maintaining CLIA approval while working closely with the Clinical Core. Finally, we have extended the use of our Developmental Core to include outreach and mentoring by including HIV/AIDS researchers at historically minority universities across North Carolina as potential Developmental Awardees. With this, our second renewal, our CFAR is functioning with a well coordinated leadership that is actively promoting and supporting interdisciplinary research focused on a number of critical research areas. CFAR support is essential to maintain this effort signed to maximize the potential of the CFAR membership.