Tennessee is situated in the midst of the US HIV epidemic. The Tennessee CFAR comprises a partnership between Vanderbilt University (VU), Meharry Medical College (MMC), and the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) that will marshal considerable local resources and expertise, and focus them on pressing contemporary challenges. This CFAR benefits from strong local programs in HIV clinical care, research, and training. Vanderbilt has a rich traditional of trans-institutional collaboration, and has long prioritized institutional support for shared core facilities. This has created a wide range of institutional cores to support basic and clinical research, and that are equally available to investigators at VU and MMC. These include two state-of-the-art resources centrally relevant to HIV/AIDS - for genomics, Vanderbilt Technologies for Advanced Genomics (VANTAGE) - and for immunology, the VU Immunology Core. Despite such resources, benefits to HIV investigators are under- realized. This is because institutional cores are intended to serve all disciplines, so are not specifically optimized for HIV research needs. The LSC will provide leadership and services designed to dramatically increase the ability of HIV investigators most effectively take advantage of these resources, and in so doing provide immense added value to HIV researchers at VU and MMC. The LSC will pursue two Specific Aims: 1) To provide concierge level service for genomics research relevant to HIV/AIDS. This will include providing investigators with direction and consultation for study design, implementation, and analysis so that they may effectively utilize VU's shared genomic technologies, and working with HIV investigators to adapt viral and human genomics assays and methodologies to meet their needs, including studies of host and viral genomic interactions; 2) To provide expertise, consultation, assay performance, and training in immunology techniques including those that require BL3 procedures. This will include providing direction and consultation in study design and implementation of state-of-the-art assays to measure phenotype and function of cell subsets relevant to HIV/AIDS, and to quantitate HIV protein and nucleic acid in plasma samples and in vitro culture.
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