TABLE OF CONTENTS |
FRONT PAGE
| NEXT ARTICLE |
PREVIOUS ARTICLE |
UNC HOMEPAGE
AIDS specialists at the School of Medicine and researchers at the Lineberger
Comprehensive Cancer Center will receive multi-million-dollar grants to bolster
their research and services.
The School of Medicine will get $12.5 million from the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases over the next five years to continue its battle
against AIDS.
Charles van der Horst and Joseph Eron, professor and associate professor of
medicine, respectively, are leading the effort.
The money is part of $21 million in renewed national Adult AIDS Clinical
Trials Group (AACTG) funding. It will support care for people living with AIDS
across North Carolina and clinical trials that already have resulted in far
more effective treatments and promise further medical progress, the physicians
say. Duke University researchers will receive the balance.
The new federal funding reflects both the quality of AIDS research and
treatment in North Carolina and the growing number of people infected with HIV
-- the virus that causes AIDS -- in the region.
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center has received a five-year, $25.3 million
grant from the National Cancer Institute to renew support for its cancer
research programs.
That's a 94 percent increase from the center's previous five-year grant, one
of the largest increases ever awarded by the institute's cancer centers
program. All of the funds will be used at the University, making this grant one
of the largest ever awarded for research at Carolina.
To support an increase in clinical-trial patients and promote new studies of
novel therapies, the institute is providing new funds for additional research
nurses, analytical laboratories and statistical support.
The grant will create a new laboratory for the ultrasensitive assessment of
DNA damage and repair that can detect the first molecular steps toward cancer,
as well as the effects of efforts to reverse those steps, officials said.
Funds also will be provided for a laboratory to develop and study mouse models
of human cancers that can be used to identify and test new opportunities for
treatment and prevention, as well as for a facility to create viruses to
deliver and target molecular-based treatments.
Funds also will establish or enlarge laboratories that help scientists and
epidemiologists determine what genes predispose people to cancer and to
understand the interplay among genetics, environmental exposures and lifestyle
factors that may lead to cancer.
TABLE OF CONTENTS |
FRONT PAGE
| NEXT ARTICLE |
PREVIOUS ARTICLE |
UNC HOMEPAGE