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NIH awards seven-year funding to Cohen and El-Sadr for leadership of HIV Prevention Trials Network

November 30, 2020
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...

NIH awards $25 million to UNC’s Global HIV Clinical Trials Unit

November 30, 2020
  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...

NIH funds study aimed at improving access to COVID-19 testing for underserved North Carolina communities

November 30, 2020
  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...

ACTG honors David Wohl, MD, with first Charles van der Horst Humanitarian Award

November 24, 2020
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...

Congolese physician wins Rotary fellowship to study public health

November 19, 2020
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...

Ciccone wins clinical research award from ASTMH

November 19, 2020
Research looks at leveraging diagnostic technology to improve management of pediatric infections in low-resource settings Emily Ciccone, MD, MHS, a UNC clinical instructor and infectious diseases fellow, recently won first prize in the clinical research award session of the 2020 annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and...

Promising COVID-19 drug is part of global study being led by UNC researchers

November 16, 2020
  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,...

‘Major advance’: Long-acting injectable more effective than daily pill in preventing HIV

November 10, 2020
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...

Meet the 2020 inaugural Charlie Scholars

October 29, 2020
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...

HIVMA names Adimora 2020 clinical educator of the year

October 29, 2020
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...

Taking the long view: Cohen delivers Richardson Lecture

October 13, 2020
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...

HIV Cure Center, Cell Microsystems to further develop single-cell diagnostic assay

October 12, 2020
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,...

Malawi-based team receives $500,000 to improve capacity for sickle cell care, research

October 12, 2020
  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...

‘Someone who looks like you’

October 7, 2020
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...

Global survey aims to measure pandemic’s effects on sexual and reproductive health

October 6, 2020
  The expanding COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the social lives of people across the world. A collaboration between researchers at the UNC Institute for Global Health & Infectious Disease, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the Academic Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Policy is...

African American women perceive systemic barriers to accessing HIV prevention care

September 20, 2020
Black women in the southern United States are less likely to seek HIV prevention and treatment services because they don’t trust the health care system, according to a study in the September/October issue of The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (JANAC) by Schenita Randolph, PhD, MPH, at...

Convalescent plasma clinical trial ramps up

September 7, 2020
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...

Wohl launches clinical trial, one of 25 sites nationally testing COVID-19 treatments

September 1, 2020
  UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases researchers have begun phase 2 and phase 3 evaluations of promising treatments for COVID-19. The UNC School of Medicine joins more than 25 initial sites participating in the clinical trials through ACTIV-2, a public-private partnership sponsored by the NIH’s National Institute...

UNC-led consortium to study HIV-related cancers in sub-Saharan Africa

August 24, 2020
A team of UNC researchers are partnering with colleagues at four institutions in Africa to study HIV-associated malignancies. With a five-year, $6 million grant from the NIH’s National Cancer Institute, the research consortium will look at screening and diagnosing innovations for three cancers common to people with HIV: Kaposi sarcoma,...

In memoriam: UNC Project-Malawi colleagues pay tribute to Dr. Peter Kazembe

August 20, 2020
Our dear friend, Dr. Peter Kazembe, a Malawian colleague, pediatrician and adjunct professor of medicine with the University of North Carolina’s Institute for Global Health and Infection Diseases, died on August 11, 2020 at the age of 65 while receiving treatment for cancer in South Africa. He is survived by...