The UCSF Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) is one of 12 centers nationwide selected for a major new grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). All CFARs selected for the awards are based at leading AIDS research institutions around the country. The UCSF Center, headquartered at San Francisco General Hospital, will receive $5.76 million over the next four years.
The award will support ongoing UCSF work in the basic, clinical, and behavioral science areas of HIV/AIDS, with an emphasis on developing new treatment approaches, understanding the biology of HIV transmission to prevent infection, and improving the effectiveness of therapies.
Co-directors of the UCSF CFAR are Paul A. Volberding, MD, director of the UCSF AIDS Program at SFGH, and Warner C. Greene, MD, PhD, director of the UCSF-affiliated Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology.
"UCSF continues to be a leader in HIV research, and we are particularly pleased that this grant will support work that crosses conventional scientific boundaries," Volberding said. "In this way, we can rapidly apply insights from basic laboratory research to address our patients' problems. The CFAR grant allows us to become an even more effective research community."
First funded through NIH in 1988, the CFAR program is designed to provide a national pool of shared resources that is made available to AIDS researchers at the local level. Through this network several major advances in AIDS research have evolved, including identification of new co-receptors for HIV, the role of cytotoxic T-lymphocytes in early infection and in controlling virus replication, and the use of anti-retroviral drugs as probes to understand the dynamics of HIV replication.
The overall mission of the CFAR program is to support AIDS research by facilitating interdisciplinary and international interactions, technology transfer through academic-industry collaborations, research dissemination activities, and community outreach.
NIH institutes funding the awards are the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Mental Health.
In addition to UCSF, the other grant recipients are:
- UC Los Angeles
- UC San Diego with the Scripps Research Foundation, Burnham Cancer Research Foundation, and La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology
- University of Alabama at Birmingham
- Emory University with the AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta, Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, and Atlanta VA Medical Center
- Great Lakes CFAR, a collaboration of Northwestern University and the Universities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan
- University of Massachusetts Medical Center
- Columbia and Rockefeller Universities with the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Research Triangle Institute and Family Health International
- Case Western Reserve University
- Miriam Hospital of Providence with Brown University, Tufts University, New England Medical Center, and Memorial Hospital of New England
- University of Washington at Seattle with Harbor View Medical Center and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center