Group items tagged

HIV-associated neurological disorders (HAND) persist in up to 50% of HIV-patients even when HIV replication is suppressed by combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), which transformed HIV/AIDS from a fatal illness into a chronically managed long-term condition. HIV does not infect neurons, but infects microglia and macrophages in the brain, causing HAND associated neuropathology. HAND epitomizes a series of disorders include Asymptomatic Neurocognitive Impairment (ANI), Mild Neurocognitive Disorder (MND), and HIV-Associated Dementia (HAD). These neurocognitive deficits interfere with psychomotor speed and coordination, diminishing memory and executive functions, and reduce quality of life in long-standing aviremic HIV-positive patients. These clinical challenges mandate research for a better understanding of HIV neuropathology; however, currently there are no effective approaches for HIV-infected live human brain studies or realistic HIV-infected animal models for HIV neuropathology. Proposed projects MUST include the following components. Applications which lack these three components will be considered non-responsive to the FOA and will not be reviewed. The major thrust of the project MUST involve exploitation of induced microglia and cerebral organoids generated from patient derived iPSC lines to better understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms of HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND). At least one aim or sub-aim MUST also involve either 1. opioid, cannabinoid, methamphetamine, nicotinic, dopaminergic, or other signaling pathways relevant to addictive substance use, or 2. exposure to addictive substances, or 3. analysis of samples from patients that have used addictive substances or have SUDs.

This NOFO will build on previous PEPFAR support under the HHS/CDC HIV treatment program in Côte d'Ivoire (CI) to ensure continuity of comprehensive HIV/AIDS services to an existing pool of clients receiving HIV/AIDS care, support, and/or treatment. The program will also continue expanding access to HIV/AIDS services while building the capacity of national structures and contributing to sustainable service delivery within the health sector in CI. Specifically, it serves to increase capacity and sustainability of the response toward controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic by initially providing support for HIV service delivery aligning with PEPFAR geographic and programmatic pivots by local indigenous organizations and ultimately providing technical assistance to the national Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene (MSHP) to sustain and expand comprehensive HIV prevention, care, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) programs. The recipient(s) will combine a facility and community-based strategy to support HIV/AIDS services. At the end of the 5-year project period, the recipient(s) should be able to collect and evaluate program data that demonstrates improved quality of HIV prevention, care, and treatment services in CI and to transition activities to MSHP and/or local organizations to sustain a basic HIV service package.

Mozambique is at a critical junction of controlling its HIV/AIDS epidemic in order to meet The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) goal of 90-90-90 by 2020 and 95-95-95 by 2030. Reaching these goals not only requires robust clinical interventions, but simultaneously requires addressing social, cultural, and legal barriers that inhibit equal access to health services for all people living with and affected by HIV. This requires not only the training of those at a local level who interact with people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) or other vulnerable populations but also building the capacity of civil society organizations that can assist with improving uptake of HIV services as well as improving retention and linkages. This NOFO will increase the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of HIV services provided in health facilities or community level by implementing innovative activities that reduce stigma and discrimination, increase retention and linkages of HIV and TB services, improve health facilities’ redress mechanisms, optimize care for HIV and TB patients, and improve patient rights and access to quality services for PLHIV.

The purpose of this FOA is to stimulate much needed research in an important area of public health significance: prevention of new HIV infections among adolescents at risk, and the identification of, linkage to and retention in care of, and long term viral suppression among youth living with HIV in low-to-middle income countries. These settings must have an HIV epidemic density defined by UNAIDS estimates as either a country 1) in which at least 200,000 people are living with HIV and the number has not decreased by more than 5% over the last 2 consecutive years of available data or 2) has an HIV prevalence of 3% or more. The UG3/UH3 Phased Innovation Awards Cooperative Agreement involves 2 phases. Funding for a UG3 phase will be used to demonstrate sufficient preparation, feasibility and capacity to meet foundational milestone targets specific to the work proposed. A UG3 project that meets its milestones will be administratively considered by NICHD and prioritized for transition to the UH3 award. Applicants responding to this FOA must address objectives for both the UG3 and UH3 phases.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) supports a program of longitudinal cohorts to address emerging and high priority research on HIV/AIDS in the context of injection and non-injection substance abuse.  These cohorts provide a strong resource platform for current and future collaborative efforts with other investigators to address emerging questions related to HIV pathogenesis, prevention, and treatment in the context of substance abuse, as well as to foster the creativity and efficiency of investigator-initiated research projects. The diverse research activities among these cohorts include basic immunologic, and virologic studies, as well as studies on HIV prevention and treatment, and the co-morbidities and co-infections associated with HIV and substance abuse.  NIDA has determined that a coordinating center (CC) is needed in order to take advantage of these rich sources of data and bio-specimens and optimize collaborations among both the cohort investigators and other researchers not funded under the cohort program. In addition, the CC is expected to establish a virtual repository, and facilitate the leadership of the cohorts steering committee (SC), consisting of representatives from the NIDA-funded cohorts and NIDA staff. At this time, NIDA is soliciting  cooperative agreement applications for a CC to support the collaborative efforts of the cohorts that are currently funded by NIDA.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to solicit grant applications that propose to establish Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD) to support a coordinated, multidisciplinary team(s) of researchers focused on iterative approaches to accelerate HIV vaccine development by addressing key immunogen design roadblocks to the discovery and development of a safe and effective antibody-mediated preventive HIV vaccine.

This NOFO will support achievement of national targets for 2018 antiretroviral therapy (ART) scale-up towards the UNAIDS Fast Track Targets in Ukraine. The recipient will implement innovative and effective recruitment and case management models for persons who inject drugs (PWID) and men who have sex with men (MSM) at the community level. These innovative changes will increase uptake of HIV community based testing and increase ART initiation for these populations. The recipient will pilot risk network-based testing using point-of-care recency assays to link recently infected PWID to care. The project will focus on the six regions with the highest HIV burden (Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolayiv, Odesa, government controlled areas (GCA) of Donetsk, Kyiv City, and Kherson) and continue to work in six additional medium burden oblasts (Cherkasy, Poltava, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhya, Kirovohrad, and Kyiv). The recipient will also increase the capacity of the Government of Ukraine’s Center for Public Health (CPH) and regional monitoring and evaluation (M&E) centers specialists to conduct data analysis using statistical software and build institutional capacity to conduct economic evaluations of HIV interventions. Illustrative strategic information (SI) activities include development of trainings to support the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the newly established CPH in using statistical software, routine analysis of surveillance data, study design, and research protocol development.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support bi-phasic developmental, discovery-driven, or hypothesis-driven research focused on innovative strategies to detect HIV either within the first two weeks of infection or to monitor viral rebound after stopping or developing resistance to antiretroviral therapy. Applications should propose simple diagnostic tools that would be feasible for a self-testing platform to allow untrained individuals to detect HIV. Interdisciplinary collaborations that include biomedical, physical, and behavioral sciences are highly encouraged.

The objective of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support the development of new and innovative multipurpose prevention technologies (MPT) with rheological/biophysical properties and product user perceptions compatible with current long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) strategies (look, feel, effectiveness, safety and duration of action) for the dual purpose of preventing pregnancy and HIV infection in women. MPTs proposed for development must be dual indication and prevent pregnancy and HIV infection and have drug delivery systems (DDS) capable with sustained/extended release of both drugs. MPTs proposed for development must use a licensed contraceptive. This FOA requires an industry partner, milestones linked to Go/No Go decisions and year 5 funding requires submission of a pre-IND application to the FDA.

The objective of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support the development of new and innovative multipurpose prevention technologies (MPT) with rheological/biophysical properties and product user perceptions compatible with current long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) strategies (look, feel, effectiveness, safety and duration of action) for the dual purpose of preventing pregnancy and HIV infection in women. MPTs proposed for development must be dual indication and prevent pregnancy and HIV infection and have drug delivery systems (DDS) capable with sustained/extended release of both drugs. MPTs proposed for development must use a licensed contraceptive. This FOA requires an industry partner, milestones linked to Go/No Go decisions and year 5 funding requires submission of a pre-IND application to the FDA.

This initiative will support research projects that implement and test comprehensive service approaches to engage and retain youth and young adults (age 12 - 25 years) from health disparity populations in the HIV Treatment Cascade, which includes diagnosis, linkage to care, engagement in care, retention in care, initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART), and achievement of viral suppression.