Eli Lilly today released results of a clinical trial that found bamlanivimab, a monoclonal antibody, significantly reduced the risk of contracting COVID-19 among residents and staff of long-term care facilities. The Phase 3 trial was conducted in partnership with the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the COVID-19 Prevention Network (CoVPN). … Read more

In the summer of 2001, Shani Morgan was a few months pregnant and in prison, where she learned that she had HIV. She’d been sent from jail to Bragg Street Women’s Prison in Raleigh for better monitoring and medical treatment. What she remembers most about being treated by her UNC doctor, Becky White, MD, MPH, … Read more

U.S. News & World Report has ranked the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 11th among universities globally for its infectious diseases program. The Best Global Universities rankings, now in their seventh year, focus on academic research, publications and citations, international collaboration, and overall reputation. This is the first time infectious diseases programs have been included … Read more

A collaborative team, drawing in part on experience working with disease outbreaks in Africa, has remarkably transformed UNC’s Medical Intensive Care Unit to treat COVID-19 patients. They’ve demonstrated that it’s possible to provide critical care for patients while keeping providers safe. Like most of us during the pandemic, Billy Fischer, MD, has stayed put the … Read more

UNC Global Women’s Health has received two new grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for work on pregnancy outcomes in Zambia. The first grant funds the “Multi-omics for Mother and Infants (MOMI) Consortium,” which seeks to identify new predictive biomarkers for preterm birth, preeclampsia, stillbirth and fetal growth restriction. UNC Project-Zambia is one … Read more

The Infectious Diseases Society of America, the nation’s leading infectious diseases professional society, has elected the Institute’s Joseph Eron, MD; Anne Lachiewicz, MD, MPH; and Christopher Hurt, MD, to its latest cohort of Fellows of IDSA. As the highest honor in the field of infectious diseases, IDSA fellowships recognize those who have achieved professional excellence … Read more

AIDS Clinical Trials Group, co-led by UNC’s Joseph Eron, MD, also re-funded for seven years Myron S. Cohen, MD, director of UNC’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, and Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, MPH, MPA, director of ICAP at Columbia University, have received a seven-year award from the National Institutes of Health for leadership of … Read more

  The National Institutes of Health has awarded University of North Carolina’s Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases nearly $25 million over seven years to continue operating its Global HIV Clinical Trials Unit, or CTU. The new funding will support HIV treatment and prevention in adults, children and pregnant women at four research sites … Read more

  A team of investigators from UNC’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases has been awarded $1.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a two-year implementation science study to scale up COVID-19 testing in North Carolina. The researchers will examine the impact of a COVID screening program that uses approaches adapted … Read more

ACTG names second new award for former UNC neurology professor, Kevin Robertson The national AIDS Clinical Trials Group expanded its annual recognition program in 2020 with two new awards named for University of North Carolina faculty members who died in 2019: Charles van der Horst, MD, an infectious diseases physician and researcher, and Kevin Robertson, … Read more

The year was 1993. Alexis Mwanza, then 17, found himself huddled on top of a train, fleeing violence in his home town in the Democratic Republic of Congo by leading nine of his family members 500 miles away to Mbuji Mayi. As a displaced refugee in that city, Mwanza watched Red Cross workers and other … Read more

  Last week’s authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use of bamlanivimab feels like a shot in the arm, so to speak, for David Wohl, MD, a UNC infectious diseases physician and researcher. A monoclonal antibody developed by Eli Lilly to treat mild to moderate COVID-19, bamlanivimab is one of the … Read more

Study led by female investigators enrolled women living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa A long-acting injectable drug, cabotegravir, is safe and more effective than a daily pill in preventing HIV acquisition, according to results from a study of 3,127 cisgender women in sub-Saharan Africa. Led by UNC researchers beginning in November 2017, the study showed … Read more

Six students from Dzama, Malawi — three girls and three boys — have received scholarships to attend private school and receive individual tutoring as the inaugural class of “Charlie Scholars.” The Charlie van der Horst Malawi Scholars Program, administered by UNC Project-Malawi and the UNC Medical Foundation, honors the late UNC infectious diseases physician who … Read more

The HIV Medicine Association, or HIVMA, has honored UNC infectious diseases professor Ada Adimora, MD, MPH, with its 2020 Clinical Educator Award. The award, presented during the annual IDWeek conference, recognizes Adimora’s “extraordinary contributions to advancing clinical education, with a focus on disseminating her research on the drivers of HIV-related racial disparities.” Adimora is the … Read more

Human beings will continue to suffer from infectious diseases, some of them contagious. To fight a new disease, infectious disease physicians first work to determine the rules that govern the disease, its spread, and the gravity of the infection. Those rules then determine our prevention and treatment strategies, Institute Director Myron Cohen, MD, told his … Read more

Cell Microsystems and UNC’s HIV Cure Center will continue their work on developing an automated assay that can measure single cells for latent HIV, thanks to a two-year, $1.65 million contract from the National Institutes of Health. The new contract, a highly competitive phase II Small Business Innovation Research award, affirms the partners’ success resulting … Read more

  A team of researchers led by UNC Project-Malawi has received a one-year, $500,000 grant to build clinical and research capacity in Malawi to better diagnose and treat children with sickle cell disease. The funding is a joint award from the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious … Read more

Ernest Grant, RN, PhD, FAAN, president of American Nurses Association and an African American, shares why he is participating in COVID-19 vaccine trial   Spending a few hours at a University of North Carolina Health clinic, giving his health history and receiving an injection, might not be Ernest Grant’s favorite way to spend a Monday … Read more

On the heels of FDA authorization of convalescent plasma as a treatment for COVID-19, UNC researchers are conducting a clinical trial to determine the safety and efficacy of plasma that includes a higher amount of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. The new Coronavirus-inactivating Plasma (CoVIP) research clinical trial is designed to determine the safety and efficacy … Read more