CFAR-CFAR Collaborations
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CFAR-CFAR Collaborations |
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One of the missions of the CFAR Program is to foster CFAR-CFAR collaborations. Over the past few years, several CFAR-CFAR collaborations have been formed by the CFARs. Please see below for brief descriptions on some of the existing CFAR-CFAR Collaborations: CFAR Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS) CFAR Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Network (SBSRN) Inter-CFAR HIV/AIDS Related Malignancy (iCHARM) Working Group CFAR Global AIDS Research Consortium (CGARC) CFAR HIV/TB Co-Infection Consortium
CFAR Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS)
As a clinic-based research network, CNICS directly reflects the outcomes of clinical decisions and management options made daily in the care of HIV infected individuals and uses a collaborative cohort study design to gather unique data on the clinical, virologic, immunologic, behavioral, metabolic, service utilization, and psychosocial aspects of HIV infection and disease. Participating CNICS sites include: Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), University of Washington (UW), University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Fenway Community Health Center of Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University (JHU) [although the JHU site is no longer CFAR-funded, the investigators have continued to collaborate with the site and develop practices for including new sites into the CNICS project], and the recently added sites of the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Vanderbilt/Meharry University CFARs. The CNICS website www.cnics.net http://www.cnics.net/ provides detailed information describing the organizational structure of the network, quality assurance procedures for the database and updated data elements and cohort distributions listings for the data. Links are also provided to publications using the data and documentation for the submission of requests to access the database. The data and specimens are available to investigators from UAB as well as other research institutions for approved research studies. Members of the research community interested in studying clinical outcomes are encouraged to formulate their ideas into concept proposals for submission to the network for review. For more information, please contact: Michael S. Saag, MD or Donna Porter, PhD. CNICS website: http://www.cnics.net/
CFAR Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Network (SBSRN)
The 3rd National CFAR SBSRN Scientific Meeting was held on October 20-22, 2008 in Seattle, WA. The 4th Annual Scientific Meeting will be co-hosted by the Lifespan/Tufts/Brown and Harvard CFARs in Boston, MA in 2009. The 5th Annual Scientific Meeting will be hosted by the Emory CFAR in Atlanta, GA in 2010. These meetings are being supported by an R13 (MH081733). For more information, please contact: Michael Blank, PhD, Arnel Montenegro, MPH or Tiffany Brown.
Inter-CFAR HIV/AIDS Related Malignancy (iCHARM) Working Group Despite dramatic declines in HIV mortality rates due to the success of HAART, death due to cancer continues to rank as the second or the third cause of mortality among HIV-infected patients. HAART has reduced the incidence of some AIDS-associated cancers such as Kaposi’s sarcoma. However, HAART’s impact on the incidence of other malignancies such as NHL has been marginal, and the incidence of some cancers, such as anal, lung and Hodgkin’s lymphomas, appear to have increased in the post HAART era. The developing world, specifically sub-Saharan Africa, is facing an HIV-associated cancer crisis; some reports have indicated that certain AIDS-defining cancers have increased 10-100 fold in the context of HIV infection. The CFAR program emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration nationally and internationally, especially between basic and clinical investigators, translational research in which findings from the laboratory are brought to the clinic and vice versa. In order to address the evolving need in HIV-associated malignancy research some members of the CFAR community came together and established the inter-CFAR HIV/AIDS Related Malignancy (iCHARM) Working Group. iCHARM focuses on developing collaborations across CFARs and with NCI-designated Cancer Centers (CC) at institutions that also contain CFARs to address ongoing challenges of HIV-associated malignancies. Goals of this group include leveraging existing resources, and developing training and funding opportunities in basic, clinical, and epidemiologic issues concerning HIV/AIDS-related cancers in both the domestic and international arenas. In 2007, the NCI supplement “CFAR and Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCC) collaborations in domestic and international studies of HIV-associated malignancies” was awarded to the UPENN and UCSF CFARs to initiate a cooperative program of developmental pilot funding to address emerging opportunities AIDS-related malignancies and HIV- and viral-associated cancers. Seven iCHARM developmental pilot projects were awarded, topics included basic, epidemiologic and clinical research. Additional funds were provided through the UCSF CFAR to the Uganda Cancer Institute to assist in developing infrastructure for HIV/AIDS malignancy researach in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2008, 10 supplemental funding grants to the Developmental Core were awarded by NCI to individual CFARs to support pilot projects between a CFAR investigator and a Cancer Center investigator. The goal of this supplement is to build closer ties between CFARs and NCI-designated Cancer Centers. For more information, please contact Paul Volberding, MD or Jim Hoxie, MD.
CFAR Global AIDS Research Consortium (CGARC) The CFAR Global AIDS Research Consortium (CGARC) is a coalition of CFAR-affiliated investigators with HIV-related research efforts in developing countries around the world. The mission of CGARC is to create synergistic interactions between CFAR institutions via joint programs and research efforts that span multiple CFARs. CGARC efforts thus far have included creating an inventory of international HIV research and care initiatives among existing CFAR centers, compiling a list of researchers from multiple Centers who are willing to review CFAR-related international grant applications, and developing an agreement for CFAR sites to work together on joint targeted evaluation projects for USAID and PEPFAR funding. For more information, please contact: Michael Saag, MD, Donna Porter, PhD, King Holmes, MD, PhD, or Susan Mello. For information about the list of CFAR international grant reviewers, please contact Bryna Block.
CFAR HIV/TB Co-Infection Consortium The HIV/TB Co-Infection Consortium was first introduced at the National CFAR meeting at Harvard and subsequently followed up by a national symposium co-hosted by the Penn and Harvard CFARs. The symposium entitled “Confronting TB-HIV Co-infection” was held on June 30, 2005 and led to a collaboration with the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research and the formation of the editorial board to pull together a supplement to the Journal of Infectious Diseases on TB/HIV coinfection. A Supplement was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases on "HIV/TB Coinfection: Current State of Knowledge and Research Priorities." 15 August 2007, Volume 196, Number S1. For more information, please contact Jim Hoxie, MD or Bruce Walker, MD.
This page is in progress and any comments or suggestions are most welcome. Please forward to nguyencd@niaid.nih.gov. Last updated 01/12/2009 (alt) |
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The CFAR Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS) is the first electronic medical records-based resource network poised to integrate clinical data from the large and diverse population of HIV-infected persons in the modern HAART era who are receiving care at one of the US-funded Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) sites.
The purpose of the CFAR Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Network (SBSRN) is to foster cross CFAR collaborations between behavioral and social scientists, to share strategies on how behavioral and social scientists communicate with basic scientists, to provide a forum for the exchange of the most recent information in the behavioral sciences regarding HIV/AIDS, and to mentor the next generation of behavioral social scientists.