The overall goal of this grant will be to organize and establish a multidisciplinary HIV prevention research program in HIV/AIDS at the Tropical Diseases Research Centre (TDRC) in Ndola, Zambia. This R03 grant will be focused on HIV vaccine trial site development in Ndola, a large metropolitan area and the provincial headquarters of the Copperbelt province of Zambia, where currently there is no ongoing vaccine preparedness work.
The specific aims of this R03 grant will be as follows.
Aim 1. Define cohorts of 15-45 year old subjects for eventual enrollment in HIV vaccine trials. Within this effort will include assessment of the current prevalence rate of HIV infection and sexually transmitted diseases in the cohorts, risk behavior, and design of an educational program for cohort participants for HIV prevention strategies.
Aim 2. Train Zambian personnel for administration, design and monitoring of clinical trials. Zambian staff will come to Duke University to take a 6-week course in biostatistics and clinical trial design.
Aim 3. Characterize the HIV primary isolate strains in Ndola Zambia, by cloning and sequencing up to 50 Zambian HIV isolates.
This aim cannot be totally funded by the CIPRA R03, but the infrastructure to begin to acquire the primary isolates can be funded, and isolates begun to be acquired for preliminary data for subsequent preparation of a CIPRA U01 grant and to speed HIV vaccine development. Over the next two years, we will prepare for submission of a U01 CIPRA grant with Isaac Zulu, Moses Sinkala and Francis Kasolo in Lusaka, Zambia. Together, with the Lusaka team, we envision a strong application from Zambia in two years for a comprehensive HIV prevention and treatment program in Zambia.
| Kirchherr, Jennifer L; Hamilton, Jennifer; Lu, Xiaozhi et al. (2011) Identification of amino acid substitutions associated with neutralization phenotype in the human immunodeficiency virus type-1 subtype C gp120. Virology 409:163-74 |
| Kirchherr, Jennifer L; Lu, Xiaozhi; Kasongo, Webster et al. (2007) High throughput functional analysis of HIV-1 env genes without cloning. J Virol Methods 143:104-11 |
