Power of SUNY

University at Buffalo Gets a Boost in HIV/AIDS Research Funding

For more than 10 years, the University at Buffalo's HIV Clinical Pharmacology Research Program has helped fight the global AIDS epidemic by hosting visiting pharmaceutical scientists from countries like Zimbabwe and Nigeria in order to teach them how to conduct clinical trials and research on HIV/AIDS.

In Nov. 2010, in recognition of their success and the need to expand these efforts, the National Institutes of Health has awarded a total of $2.3 million to the laboratory, housed in the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences.

The new grants bring to more than $11 million the funds that the UB HIV Clinical Pharmacology Research program has been awarded since 2008. That year, more than $7 million was awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to initiate at UB the world's only International HIV/AIDS UB Clinical Pharmacology Quality Assurance (CPQA) program, designed to ensure that HIV/AIDS researchers in resource-limited countries conducted high-quality, pharmacology-focused clinical trials.

With the new funding, the UB researchers will be able to intensify efforts to train in-country laboratory specialists where HIV/AIDS infection rates are highest globally, test their bioanalytical proficiency and conduct quality control analysis of HIV/AIDS clinical trials and their harmacology-focused research studies.