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Posted 12-30-99

AIDS researchers get $10 million to continue studies

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a five-year, $10 million grant to Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine and University Hospitals of Cleveland to continue AIDS research that began here 13 years ago. The grant comes from the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Michael M. Lederman, director of the AIDS Clinical Trials Unit at UH and acting director of the Center of AIDS Research at CWRU's School of Medicine, said that the NIH announcement is good news for Northeast Ohio.

"It means that the community maintains continued access to state-of-the-art HIV therapeutics,'' Lederman said. "It recognizes the contributions of Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals of Cleveland for the quality and quantity of our work. We take good care of our patients and provide valuable data on new HIV therapies."

This funding enables area residents to participate in studies that offer free HIV testing and newly developed drugs for treatment of the disease. The local award is part of more than $80 million in renewed funding from the NIH for the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group, a nationwide network of medical research institutions.

From its start in 1987, the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group has played a pivotal role in defining the standard of care for adults infected with HIV. The group's trials have evolved from early studies with single-drug regimens to the current drug "cocktails" that make up high active antiretroviral therapy.

Other recent studies have:

• Shown how new combinations of drug regimens can help people who have responded poorly to or exhausted other approaches
• Proven the value of specific markers in the blood to gauge the progress of the disease and the effectiveness of treatments
• Identified the significance of antiretroviral drug resistance and the reservoirs where HIV remains impervious to treatment
• Contributed to the understanding of how HIV destroys immune function and how the immune system can be restored

The institute, in its announcement, said the focus of future research will be antiretroviral treatment strategies, developing new ways to prevent or treat opportunistic infections and focusing on the growing problem of hepatitis C infection with AIDS.

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