This application is a competitive renewal for our Training grant on the subject """"""""Psychoneuroimmunology, AIDS and Drugs of Abuse."""""""" We have a highly successful training program in this Department and have been very successful in graduating a large number of students supported by the Training grant. To date we have had 15 students receive their Ph.D. degree supported by the Training grant since it was first funded in 1990. We have also completed the training of 10 postdoctoral trainees. We are training individuals to study the mechanisms by which the immune response is affected by drugs of abuse and how this influences microbial infection, including infection by the immunodeficiency virus which causes AIDS. Our core and joint training faculty perform basic and clinic studies on the mechanisms involved in drug induced suppression of immunity. Many of the training faculty are also involved in studying psychoneuroimmunology and AIDS as well as basic mechanisms of immunodeficiency. All of the core faculty are members of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. Joint faculty are from other departments in this Medical College, including the Departments of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Pathology, etc. This Training program provides basic knowledge to understand the mechanisms of immunological abnormalities in individuals infected with opportunistic microorganisms, including infection with AIDS virus as well as psychoneuroimmunology and effects of drugs of abuse on various immune parameters so as to develop biomedical scientists who can study AIDS, microbial infection, immunobiology, and drugs of abuse. Trainees become familiar with techniques, including biochemical, molecular, and pharmacological as well as immunological and behavioral aspects of drugs of abuse research and AIDS in terms of both clinical and laboratory experience with the aim of producing independent researchers highly knowledgeable and expert in the broad field of drugs of abuse research.
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