NIH Technology-Based Interventions to Promote Engagement in Care and Treatment Adherence for Substance Abusing Populations with HIV (R01)

This grant seeks applications to test the utility and implementation of technological tools, including mobile devices, to promote engagement in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) care among substance abusing populations with HIV. Research projects may focus on (a) the use of technology to directly improve patient-level outcomes (i.e., adherence); (b) the capacity of HIV treatment providers and related service delivery organizations to adopt and integrate such technologies to promote HIV treatment outcomes; or (c) the use of technology to improve the organization and delivery of HIV treatment and services.


Budget: Not limited (must reflect actual needs) over 5 years.
Deadlines: 7 May 2012, 7 September 2012, and more.


See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-12-117.html for more details.

NIH HIV Incidence Assays with Improved Specificity (R01)

This grant encourages applications from institutions/ organizations that propose to develop improved HIV Incidence Assays with increased specificity and reliability for distinguishing incident from chronic HIV infections, especially cost-effective assays and algorithms with improved specificity and reliability for determining HIV incidence.  Ideally, the assay would be accurate for diverse HIV-1 subtypes and could be performed in resource limited settings.


For more information, go to: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-12-012.html

Application budgets are not limited, but need to reflect actual needs of the proposed project.  The next deadline is 7 January 2011.  The deadline following that one will be 7 May 2011.

Request for Proposals: Targeted Biomedical Research Exploring the mechanisms for HIV persistence and the potential for HIV eradication

amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, is pleased to announce the availability of targeted support for biomedical research projects relevant to exploring the mechanisms for HIV persistence and the potential for HIV eradication in the following areas of research:

• Novel strategies/approaches for preventing the establishment of, or eliminating, viral reservoirs
• Understanding and characterizing cellular and tissue locations of reservoirs and their relative importance in maintaining infection in the face of ART and the immune system
• Understanding the extent to which persistence is due to true latency versus low level replication. How does the effect of ART differ in each case?
• Is there a threshold viral load below which infection will not be re-seeded?
• Studies in elite controllers and/or acute (i.e. the absence of antibody positivity) infection cohorts that may help define new mechanisms of persistence that are not HLA-driven.
• Does persistent immune activation point to a need for long-term immune reconstitution strategies? Are there benefits to immune therapy?
• Improved assays to quantify integrated versus unintegrated DNA, or characterize replication competence. Do these differ between tissues, in patients treated during acute versus chronic infection, or in progressors versus controllers?
• Improved assays to more efficiently and inexpensively measure extremely low viral load (e.g., to 0.01 copies/ml) or (changes in) the size of the persistent reservoir.
• Deep sequencing approaches to compare viruses in different tissue compartments with those in plasma following treatment interruption, with a view to identifying sources of viral rebound
• What are the consequences of chronic immune activation, in the presence or absence of ART, on tissues such as the gut, and can the damage be reversed if immune activation is controlled?

Act fast!  The deadline is 25 October 2011.  The grant is worth 250,000 USD over two years

See the link for more information.

http://www.amfar.org/lab/grants/default.aspx?id=10364#Submission_Requirements_and_Deadlines

NIH/PEPFAR Collaboration for Advancing Implementation Science in Prevention of Maternal-Child HIV Transmission (PMTCT) (R01)

The NIH, in collaboration with the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, invites applications for implementation science projects that will inform the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as they develop more efficient and cost-effective methods to deliver proven interventions for prevention of maternal-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) in PEPFAR priority countries.  In Southeast Asia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia are PEPFAR priority countries.


Globally, over 1,000 children are newly infected with HIV each day, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa; the primary mode of HIV acquisition for infants is through mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding.


Research topics may include:
      1.) Optimal ways to enhance identification of HIV-infected pregnant women
      2.) Community-based strategies effectively increase preventative MTCT (PMTCT) uptake and reduce stigma, 
      3.) Does family and male partner involvement to increase PMTCT uptake and successful completion of the cascade and how can family and male partner involvement in PMTCT be increased? 
      4.) In a variety of settings (urban, rural), what are barriers to and effective strategies for providing more complex antiretroviral prophylaxis regimens to HIV-infected women who do not qualify for ART at the present time?
      5.) What strategies are needed to optimize nutrition for the HIV-exposed infants and for their HIV-infected breastfeeding mothers?


There are many other examples of research topics.  Please visit http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HD-12-210.html for more information.


The deadline is 28 February 2012, but a letter of intent is due by 28 January 2012.  This grant is worth 1,000,000 USD over two years.