Blog.AIDS.gov: Restructuring NIAID's HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Networks

Restructuring NIAID's HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Networks
By Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D., Director of NIAID Division of AIDS

Over the next several weeks, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) will post a series of entries here on AIDS.gov related to planning for the future of NIAID’s HIV/AIDS clinical trial networks. The awards supporting the six current HIV/AIDS networks are set to expire in 2013 and 2014.

Building on the success of the current infrastructure, NIAID is looking to expand the scope of the network’s current activities to include the treatment and prevention of other infectious diseases of significance to people who are infected with HIV or are at risk for infection both domestically and globally, namely tuberculosis, hepatitis, and malaria. Additionally, we are looking for ways to increase collaboration across the networks, create transparent mechanisms for network leadership to solicit and support ideas from the research community, and develop a means for external researchers to tap into the clinical trial infrastructure and capacity that the network system provides. Finally, it is our goal to have each of the networks establish a means of designing and implementing a cross-network agenda to address research questions related to specific populations.

Each of our upcoming blog posts will focus on specific aspects of the network restructuring in which we are seeking input from the broader research and HIV/AIDS communities. Specifically, the entries will address:

•NIAID’s clinical research priority areas, namely prevention, therapeutics and vaccines;
•the structure of the new networks; and
•the relationship between network leadership groups and clinical research sites.

open here please:
Blog.AIDS.gov: Restructuring NIAID's HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Networks