July 1, 2008
NIH grant to establish University Center for AIDS Research
Michael Keefer
A $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will allow more than 50 University scientists to expand their work in HIV/AIDS research and collaborate with seasoned South African researchers working at the heart of the epidemic. The new grant establishes a University Developmental Center for AIDS Research (D-CFAR), designed to increase the overall quality and quantity of HIV/AIDS research at the University and its partner institutions in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa. Michael Keefer, professor of medicine, is codirecting the project, and recently discussed the new NIH funding and the potential benefits for Rochester researchers.
Why do you think Rochester was selected to receive this funding to join the CFAR program?
The Centers for AIDS Research program, or CFAR, is collaboratively funded by six institutes of the National Institutes of Health and provides administrative and research support for a broad array of HIV/AIDS research projects at U.S. institutions. The goal of the program is to encourage new research at these academic centers, with a particular emphasis on establishing new collaborations and bringing new researchers into the field. There are currently 19 mature CFARs, including those at the New York University School of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. The University of Rochester has won a “developmental” CFAR award for first-time applicants, which will give us the opportunity to establish a track record so we will be in a better position to compete successfully for a full CFAR in five years.
To be included in this exclusive program, we had to demonstrate strength in a variety of HIV/AIDS research areas and our potential to do more. We have shown particular strength in translational immunology and vaccine development, virology, antiretroviral clinical trials and resistance, neuro-AIDS, the biology of opportunistic pathogens, and mathematical modeling.
While putting together the grant, we had the opportunity to carefully assess just how many people at the University are working on various aspects of HIV research, which pointed to the potential for a variety of new collaborative investigations that could lead to new grants. The bottom line is that we feel that with a little assistance from the D-CFAR program, our investigators on the whole could become even more productive in their work.
What will the new developmental center enable us to do that we haven’t been able to accomplish previously? What will this mean for researchers here?
This new grant has allowed us to help our researchers better position themselves to compete for new funding from NIH and other funding sources. Our five-year goal is to realize a 25 percent increase in the University’s federal HIV research funding and research faculty size. To achieve this goal, the D-CFAR will fund pilot studies that will assist researchers in gathering the preliminary data required for subsequent grants.
We plan to encourage collaborations that have not been considered before and provide broader input on career development for our junior faculty. We also hope to see investigators from the River Campus, School of Nursing, and School of Medicine and Dentistry working together in unprecedented ways.
How will this funding allow you to expand your international collaborations with your South African partners?
I am particularly excited about our opportunities to collaborate with our South African colleagues because, frankly, for the HIV/AIDS research field, South Africa is a gold mine. They desperately need help, as one out of every five people is infected, and the country has more overall HIV infections than any country in the world. Despite their world-class expertise and access to a wide variety of valuable biological samples, our partners find themselves overwhelmed by mountains of under-analyzed data. We feel our existing strength in biostatistics and mathematic modeling will be a very fruitful area of collaboration as there are nearly an endless variety of projects that could be conducted with data that currently exists or is being generated.
Unfortunately, we suspect that our developmental program will ultimately be limited by the amount of funding we have at our disposal, rather than the ideas we can generate. For the time being, we will need to do our best to be creative in the use of our resources to put ourselves in the best position to convert our program to a full CFAR in five years. If we are successful with that, we will have the opportunity to do much, much more.
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