This World AIDS Day, HIV/AIDS researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine learned that they now have an enhanced opportunity to help move the world toward a day when that observance is rendered obsolete. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced Dec. 1, 2020, that Johns Hopkins Medicine will receive five of the seven-year grants awarded to 35 U.S. and international institutions to operate clinical trial units (CTUs) and coordinate HIV/AIDS clinical trials in four federally funded networks.

The three CTU grants and two leadership awards for Johns Hopkins Medicine are the most given to any one institution.

NIAID and co-funding NIH agencies will provide approximately $375.3 million in the first year to support the clinical trial networks that each address one of four types of HIV/AIDS research: vaccines, prevention, treatments for adults, and treatments for maternal, pediatric and adolescent patients. Each network is led by a leadership and operations center, and includes a laboratory center, a statistical and data management center, and the CTUs.

The 35 CTUs in the four clinical trial networks support 101 clinical research sites in 18 countries across North America, South America, Africa and Asia.

Along with the awarding of the CTU grants, NIAID announced that Susan Eshleman, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will continue her role as principal investigator for the HIV Prevention Trials Network Laboratory Center. Also, Sharon Nachman, M.D., professor of pediatrics at Stony Brook Medicine and an adjunct professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will continue as director of the leadership and operations center for the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network.

The three Johns Hopkins Medicine-led CTUs being funded are:
 

• Baltimore-India Clinical Trails Unit, led by Amita Gupta, M.D., M.H.S. and Charles Flexner, M.D., both professors of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
   
• Uganda Clinical Trials Unit, led by Mary Fowler, M.D., M.P.H. and Aaron Tobian, M.D., Ph.D., both professors of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Phillipa Musoke, M.B.Ch.B., associate professor of pediatrics at Makerere University in Uganda and a member of the Makerere University - Johns Hopkins University Research Collaboration
   
• Blantyre (Malawi) Clinical Trials Unit, led by Taha Taha, Ph.D., M.B.B.S., M.C.M., M.P.H., professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

All of the researchers are available for interviews.