The main goal of this R03 grant application is to gather a multidisciplinary team of local and international researchers to prepare a UI9 CIPRA grant application. The Argentinean Integrated Program for HIV/AIDS research will be a multi-institutional team with well-established local leadership and expertise in the clinical, virology, epidemiology, and immunological areas. The specific goals of this program are: 1) To increase the global knowledge in the field of HIV/AIDS through specific research; 2) To train human resources tenable both in Argentina and in the U.S.; and 3) To build local research capacity and infrastructure. In order to address these 3 objectives, it is necessary: 1) To select suitable HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment research proposals to be conducted in the context of the Argentinean Integrated Program for HIV/AIDS research across different regions of the country. 2) To discuss with our main overseas referents all matters related with this grant application. 3) To summon national public health authorities involved in provincial and federal HIV/AIDS programs to discuss their participation in the steering and advisory committees. 4) To define with international collaborators strategies to develop vaccine pre-clinical studies, a field that has not been explored in Argentina so far. 5) To build partnership with public health authorities and the community in order to link the existing programs with the Argentinean Integrated Program for HIV/AIDS research. 6) To estimate samples size of research subjects to be recruited and/or the amount of laboratory work to be performed in each project. 7) To identify the training, staff development, scientific and administrative resources needed to undertake and sustain the Argentinean Integrated Programs for HIV/AIDS.
