Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Receives Five-Year Grant From
National Institutes of Health
ATLANTA--The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the Emory
Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) (http://www.sph.emory.edu/CFAR)
more than $7.3 million in a five-year grant that includes renewal of
Emory’s designation as an NIH CFAR site. The award marks the culmination
of a four-year planning period for the Emory CFAR that began with its
original NIH designation in 1998. The new grant will help facilitate
the continued growth of AIDS research at Emory College, the Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences, and four teaching and research institutions
within Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center including the Emory University
School of Medicine, the Rollins School of Public Health, the Nell Hodgson
Woodruff School of Nursing, and the Yerkes National Primate Research
Center.
NIH funding for HIV/AIDS
research at Emory grew from $11.7 million to $33.5 million during the
CFAR’s developmental period, while total Emory funding for HIV/AIDS
research increased from $23.1 million to $44.2 million one of the
steepest growth curves of any of the 19 NIH CFARs nationwide. The Emory
CFAR now includes more than 120 faculty, including 60 who serve as principal
investigators on NIH grants. As a measure of the impact of CFAR upon
HIV/AIDS recruiting and research development at Emory, only 17 of the
60 current principal investigators (PIs) were PIs or Co-PIs on Emory
NIH-funded HIV research grants prior to the institutional establishment
of the Emory CFAR in 1995. More than 30 additional faculty have been
recruited to Emory during the developmental period.
The Emory CFAR includes a
broad range of programs in prevention sciences, vaccine development
and testing, AIDS pathogenesis, and clinical sciences, as well as collaborations
with international groups such as the United Nations Programme on AIDS
(UNAIDS), the Fogarty Foundation’s AIDS International Training and Research
Program (AITRP), and the World Health Organization (WHO). The Emory
CFAR’s location in Atlanta, often referred to as "the public health
capital of the world," affords it unique collaborative opportunities
with high-profile international organizations combating AIDS, including
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Carter Center,
Project CARE, and the Task Force for Child Survival.
James Curran, MD, MPH, dean
of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory, is director and principal
investigator of the Emory CFAR. Dean Curran is former director of the
HIV/AIDS Division at the CDC and former assistant surgeon general of
the United States Public Health Service.
"The tremendous growth of
Emory’s program in HIV/AIDS is evidenced not only by the major increase
in our research funding but also in the breadth of our programs in prevention,
laboratory research and treatment," Dr. Curran said. "In the next five
years we will continue to build on the exciting advances in immunology,
vaccines and drug development being made in our laboratories. We also
will continue fundamental research in HIV prevention, risk assessment
and interventional strategies, and expect to continue our leadership
role in national and international HIV prevention and treatment initiatives."
The Emory CFAR facilitates
research within Emory University by providing shared equipment, expertise
and services to the Emory HIV/AIDS research community through the staffing
of six research cores, including developmental, behavioral and social
sciences, biostatistics, clinical research, virology/pharmacology, and
immunology.
The Emory CFAR award is jointly
funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID) and five other NIH institutes: 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.
CFAR LEADERSHIP
James W. Curran, MD, MPH
CFAR Director; Dean, Rollins School of Public Health
David S. Stephens, MD
Executive Vice-Chair of Medicine and Director, Division of Infectious
Diseases, Emory University School of Medicine
Rafi Ahmed, PhD
CFAR Associate Director for Pathogenesis and Vaccine Development; Georgia
Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, and Director, Emory Vaccine Center
Carlos del Rio, MD
CFAR Associate Director for Clinical Science and International Research;
Chief of Medicine, Grady Memorial Hospital; Director, Emory AIDS International
Training and Research Program
Ralph DiClemente, PhD
CFAR Associate Director for Prevention Science; Charles Howard Candler
Professor of Public Health
Kimberly Sessions, EdD
CFAR Assistant Director for Programs; Senior Associate Faculty, Behavioral
Science and Health Education, Rollins School of Public Health.
Additional leadership is
provided by the CFAR core directors and an advisory board of key faculty
from Emory University’s Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center
HIV/AIDS INITIATIVES AT
EMORY UNIVERSITY
Vaccine Research
Emory Vaccine Research Center
In 1999 Emory dedicated a
new 75,000 square-foot Emory Vaccine Center, which includes one of the
largest groups of academic investigators in the world focused on the
development, evaluation and implementation of vaccines for HIV/AIDS,
malaria, tuberculosis, anthrax and smallpox. The Vaccine Center, which
is supported by the NIH and the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), is
located adjacent to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Yerkes
has long been recognized as one of the leading centers for biomedical
and biobehavioral research with non-human primates. The unique animal
resources and technical support at Yerkes and a close relationship with
the Emory School of Medicine’s clinical programs in HIV/AIDS provide
a truly unique and comprehensive research environment.
The Emory Vaccine Center
is directed by Rafi Ahmed, PhD, Emory CFAR associate director for pathogenesis
and vaccine development. Dr. Ahmed is a GRA eminent scholar and scientist
renowned for his research in T-cell immunology and memory cell response.
A new vaccine developed by Vaccine Center and Yerkes scientist Harriet
Robinson, PhD and her colleagues, is considered one of the most promising
new HIV vaccine candidates in the world. The vaccine has proven remarkably
effective in monkeys against a formidable challenge with SHIV, a combination
of the immunodeficiency viruses that infect humans (HIV) and simian
primates (SIV), and will enter human clinical trials late in 2002 or
early in 2003.
The Hope Clinic
In spring 2002, Emory opened
the Hope Clinic of the Emory Vaccine Center, a community-based clinical
research facility located three miles from Emory in downtown Decatur,
Georgia. The Hope Clinic is devoted to clinical trials of promising
new vaccines and therapeutic interventions. Mark Feinberg, MD, PhD,
is medical director of the Hope Clinic and co-director (along with Dr.
Jeffrey Lennox) of the Emory CFAR Clinical Research Core. Dr. Feinberg
has been actively involved in HIV research, patient care and policy
since 1984, having served as medical officer for the Office of AIDS
Research at the NIH and as chair of the NIH Coordinating Committee on
AIDS Etiology and Pathogenesis Research. Dr. Feinberg is also principal
investigator of an NIH-funded study of innovative new vaccine strategies
to prevent HIV infection and leads a multidisciplinary, multinational
group working on new ways to deliver HIV vaccines to patients using
portions of FDA-approved vaccines for measles, chickenpox and yellow
fever.
Translating basic research
progress into real vaccines that make a difference in eliminating hardship
around the world is a central mission of the Hope Clinic. Research staff
at the clinic are currently conducting early phase clinical trials of
promising HIV vaccines in healthy volunteers.
Clinical Research
Emory CFAR and School of
Medicine faculty treat and conduct clinical research with HIV/AIDS patients
at five major sites in Atlanta, including Grady Memorial Hospital, Crawford
Long Hospital, the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Emory University
Hospital and the Ponce de Leon Center.
The Ponce Center, which is
directed and staffed by Emory School of Medicine infectious disease
specialists, is the site of one of the largest and most comprehensive
outpatient HIV treatment facilities in the country, serving more than
4,000 HIV/AIDS patients, including 300 children, representing approximately
half of the HIV-infected patients in Atlanta. Under the direction of
Jeffrey Lennox, MD, associate professor of medicine, medical director
of the Grady Infectious Diseases Program, PI of the Emory AIDS Clinical
Trial Unit (ACTU), and Emory CFAR Clinical Research Core co-director
(along with Dr. Mark Feinberg), the Ponce Center is also the site of
approximately 20 ongoing clinical trials for HIV/AIDS patients. In their
patient care and research activities, Emory infectious disease physicians
direct special attention to improving access to care and to effective
drug therapy for low-income and inner-city AIDS patients.
Under the direction of CFAR
Advisory Board member David Rimland, MD, the Georgia Research Center
for AIDS and HIV Infection at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center
is one of four national VA AIDS research centers funded by the Department
of Veteran Affairs. The Center is staffed by Emory School of Medicine
and CFAR faculty members, and includes programs in basic, epidemiologic,
clinical and applied research. Emory and VA scientist Raymond Schinazi,
PhD (co-director of the Emory CFAR Virology/Pharmacology Core), and
Emory College chemistry professor Dennis Liotta, PhD (director of the
Emory CFAR Developmental Core), have been leaders in HIV/AIDS drug discovery
over the past 15 years, leading to the development of the antiviral
drugs 3TC, FTC, and other anti-HIV drugs currently in clinical trials.
Behavioral Research
The Emory CFAR also supports
and facilitates some of the most ground-breaking behavioral prevention
science research in the world. David Holtgrave, PhD is director of the
CFAR Behavioral & Social Sciences Core. Before joining Emory in 2001,
Dr. Holtgrave was director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention Intervention
Research and Support, National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention
at the CDC. He brings extensive experience in the economic evaluation
of HIV prevention programs to Emory’s research and outreach efforts.
Dr. Holtgrave’s recruitment to Emory is just one of the more recent
of many that have brought international attention to the prevention
research taking place at the University.
In addition to Dr. Holtgrave,
the CFAR Behavioral & Social Sciences Core has recruited six other prevention
research faculty to Emory including Ralph DiClemente, PhD, Gina Wingood,
ScD, and Richard Crosby, PhD, to join nationally and internationally
known HIV/AIDS researchers Claire Sterk, PhD, Kathleen Miner, PhD, and
Colleen DiIorio, PhD.
"We went from having a few
stars in HIV/AIDS research to one of the largest concentrations of forward-looking
prevention researchers in the country just in the last five years,"
says Kimberly Sessions, EdD, CFAR assistant director for programs, "If
you want to see what is happening in cutting-edge HIV prevention research,
you look at what is happening at Emory."
With the assistance of the
Emory CFAR Behavioral & Social Sciences Core, Emory prevention scientists
are actively engaged in research in a wide range of settings including
STD clinics, community-based organizations, county health departments,
the Ponce Center, prenatal programs, incarceration facilities, Atlanta
Job Corps, Boys & Girls Clubs, alternative high schools, adolescent
medicine clinics and inner-city neighborhoods.
The three primary research
themes in prevention science currently taking place at the Emory CFAR
include the development and evaluation of behavioral risk-reduction
interventions tailored to particularly vulnerable populations such as
drug users, incarcerated populations, and African American adolescents
and women; the development and evaluation of new and innovative strategies
to enhance adherence to antiretroviral therapy; and the development
and evaluation of strategies to facilitate HIV testing acceptance and
access to care among hard-to-reach high-risk populations. "Our programs
include an emphasis on ethnic pride, self-image, and self-awareness,
as well as sexual health," says Dr. Wingood, co-director of the CFAR
Behavioral & Social Sciences Core.
International Research
The Emory CFAR also has extensive global collaborations and initiatives
in prevention, vaccine research and treatment. It is one of only six
UNAIDS Collaborating Centers worldwide. Under the direction of Emory
CFAR associate director Carlos del Rio, MD, the CFAR is also an NIH-designated
AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP), which is part
of the Fogarty International Center. Through the AITRP program, CFAR
faculty members are enhancing HIV/AIDS-related research capabilities
within Mexico, Vietnam, Armenia and the Republic of Georgia. CFAR vaccine
scientists are also working in Africa (Cote d’Ivoire and Ethiopia) and
India to arrange clinical trials of promising HIV vaccines while Emory
behavioral scientists and infectious disease specialists are collaborating
on health promotion and prevention projects with the South African Medical
Research Institute.
HIV/AIDS Education
The Emory CFAR facilitates
advances in HIV/AIDS education as well as research. Through the activities
of the HRSA-funded Southeast AIDS Training and Education Center (SEATEC),
directed by Emory CFAR Advisory Board member Ira Schwartz, MD, Emory’s
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine works in a four-state area
(GA, NC, SC, AL) to provide clinical training for health care workers
who provide care to patients with HIV/AIDS.
The Emory CFAR and the Emory
Vaccine Research Center also co-host the Vaccine Dinner Club (VDC),
a monthly seminar series initiated in 1999 by CFAR that currently includes
in its membership more than 650 vaccine investigators, developers, and
administrators from Emory, the CDC, the University of Georgia, the Carter
Center, Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia State University, Georgia
Tech, Georgia state government, charitable foundations and private industry.
The VDC has gained a national reputation and its monthly meetings routinely
draw from 150 to 250 people. The VDC membership is highly interdisciplinary
and includes basic science, translational and clinical researchers as
well as vaccine developers, epidemiologists, behavioral scientists and
policy makers. |