The University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health (CVD) has been an established VTEU site since 1974. The goal of the VTEUs is to initiate innovative concepts for clinical research and implement clinical site protocols for evaluating vaccines, other preventive biologics, therapeutics, diagnostics, and devices for the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases, and CVD is uniquely poised to accomplish this goal. CVD's expert and accomplished investigative team has complementary skill sets in all areas necessary to address the NIAID priority areas, with established management plans to effectively allocate work and conduct multiple projects simultaneously. CVD is internationally recognized for our capacity and capability to conduct controlled human infection trials for malaria, influenza, and enteric pathogens and to implement treatment and prevention trials in endemic areas for malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTD), both of which have been a focus of its research for many years. CVD has access to U.S. populations of healthy subjects in all age groups for this research and subjects with special risks, such as patients attending outpatient clinics with sexually transmitted infection (STI) and other conditions that generally do not requiring hospitalization. Strong domestic collaborations at sites experienced in clinical trials provide the CVD's VTEU with surge capacity among healthy subjects of all ages and vulnerable populations such as pregnant women in the U.S. to address public health emergencies. CVD's international collaborators, including two long-standing permanent field sites in Africa, are an invaluable resource for vetted international trial sites in low resource countries endemic for malaria and NTD with experience in conducting high quality NIAID and VTEU studies. This proposal describes mechanisms to implement protocols that arise from concepts proposed by the Leadership Group (LG) and the research community including investigators from other VTEUs, academia, industry, non-governmental organizations, and DMID. These concepts will focus on NIAID priority areas, including malaria, NTD, respiratory infections, particularly influenza, enteric diseases, STI, and emerging infectious diseases and other infectious disease considerations. Under our VTEU contract that is nearing completion (2013-2023), CVD was awarded over 23 Task Orders, enrolled over 1,500 participants, and successfully collaborated with national and international sites. This renewal application is intended to supplement the new VTEU award (1UM1AI148689) that we received in December, 2019 in response to AI18-046; funding for this award was limited to one year as a result of an omission by our Sponsored Programs Administration to include a request for 7 full years of funding. The current proposal seeks to supplement that one year award with an additional 6 years of funding.
Advancing vaccines, treatments, and other tools for preventing and controlling endemic, epidemic and emerging infectious diseases that threaten health and well-being is a top NIAID and public healthy priority. In its capacity as a longstanding and accomplished VTEU, the University of Maryland Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health (CVD) proposes to harness our innovation, technical capacity, in-depth subject matter expertise, and broad network of domestic and international collaborators to achieve program goals. We will work collaboratively with VTEU sites and leadership to identify and implement the highest quality clinical research across NIAID priority areas, while mentoring and developing the next generation of clinical scientists.
