National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day is September 18

Led by the AIDS Institute, National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day (NHAAD) is observed each year on September 18th to focus on the increasing number of people living long, full lives with HIV. The awareness day also calls attention to the unique health and social needs, as well as the challenges of HIV prevention, testing, treatment, and care in older adults.

Today, thanks to improvements in the effectiveness of care and treatment, people with HIV who are diagnosed early, and who get and stay on antiretroviral therapy, can keep the virus suppressed and live long and healthy lives. As a result, the number of older adults with HIV is growing. In 2018, more than half of people with diagnosed HIV in the United States were aged 50 and older. For this reason, the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (2022-2025) adds a new focus on the needs of the growing population of people with HIV who are aging. Learn more about NHAAD and access resources related to aging with HIV.

News from the CFAR

Deadline TODAY: Register for the CFAR Fall Scientific Retreat!

Today is the last day to register for the 18th Annual CFAR Fall Scientific Retreat! The retreat will be held Thursday, September 22nd. We are excited to be back in person this year at the JB Duke Hotel. The program will run from 9am-3:30pm, with continental breakfast available at 8:30am. Registration is free.

This year’s retreat will feature:

Keynote Speaker:

Brian Mustanski, PhD

Co-Director, Third Coast Center for AIDS Research

Director, Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing

Co-Director, Center for Prevention Implementation Methodology

Plenary Speaker:

Chris Beyrer, MD, MPH

Incoming Director, Duke Global Health Institute

A full draft agenda is available on the website. 

Learn more about the retreat and register on the CFAR website.

Dr. Guido Ferrari and Dr. Wilton Williams awarded UM1 grant - Center for Innovative HIV/AIDS Vaccine and Cure Research

Congratulations to Dr. Guido Ferrari, Professor in Surgery, and Dr. Wilton Williams, Assistant Professor in Surgery, for receiving NIH funding for their Co-PI grant, “Center for Innovative HIV/AIDS Vaccine and Cure Research (CIAVCR)”. The UM1 award will build upon the development of the team’s vaccine strategy to induce protective immune responses in non-human primate (NHP) models by exploring innovative messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) constructs for immunogen delivery that can elicit both protective and therapeutic B and T cell responses.

The program has two main research foci. The first, led by Drs. Wilton Williams and Barton Haynes (Professor of Medicine and Immunology) focuses on vaccine-induced neutralizing antibody protection from HIV-1 infection. The second research focus, led by Drs. Guido Ferrari and Michael Betts (Professor of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania), centers on therapeutic vaccine regimen in association with immune modulators for eradication of latent reservoir.

This UM1 presents an exciting opportunity to advance research towards protective and therapeutic vaccine strategies for HIV, which have remained elusive, to leverage the latter to eradicate HIV infection. Building upon recent advances in HIV immunology and vaccine clinical research, the team hypothesizes that a vaccine strategy capable of inducing both polyfunctional neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) and CD8 T cell responses would be the optimal regimen to both prevent and cure HIV-1. The in vivo mechanistic studies will reveal the extent to which NAb and CD8 T cell responses contribute to prevention and eradication of HIV-1 infection. The program will build upon an existing vaccine strategy that can induce protective NAb responses in NHPs by exploring innovative mRNA constructs for immunogen delivery that can elicit both NAb and CD8 T cell responses.

The vaccine regimen will ultimately represent a novel approach for prevention as well as treatment of HIV-1 infection. For treatment, the teams will evaluate the ability of this vaccine regimen to act in concert with the latest generation of latency reversing agents (LRA) that has been recently described as potent and successful in the NHP model in addition to novel anti-HLA-E/ VL9-peptide complex mAbs that can enhance the cytotoxic activity of CD8 T and Natural Killer cells, as well as antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) mediated by the NK cells.

The team is comprised of dedicated investigators with broad expertise from multiple institutions: Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Harvard University, Oxford University and BIOQUAL Inc.

Read more about the award on our website.

2022 Quantitative Methods for HIV Researchers Summer Interns reflect on the summer - Part 2

The Quantitative Methods for HIV Researchers Summer Internship program offers full-time summer internships for graduate students in the quantitative sciences to conduct research in leading HIV/AIDS laboratories, co-mentored by both an HIV/AIDS researcher and quantitative science faculty. These internships immerse graduate students in the quantitative sciences necessary for research currently underway in leading HIV/AIDS laboratories. HIV/AIDS focused PIs submit their proposals in the fall and student applicants are screened and matched with appropriate projects in Clinical, Translational, or Socio-behavioral Science.

This summer, fifteen interns were paired with a Duke CFAR PI and Quantitative Mentor to support an ongoing research project. We asked a few interns to share their experiences and reflect on the summer. Last week's newsletter featured two of the interns. Meet three more!

Read all of the intern reflections.

Help us recruit for the Durham-Duke CFAR Collaborative Community Council!

Over the past year, and with input from prior community advisory board members and new leadership team, we have been working to create a new Durham-Duke CFAR Collaborative Community Council. The Council Co-Chairs are José R. and Eugenia R., and our Council Senior Advisor is Rita M.

We are now recruiting for up to 12 at-large, compensated member positions on the Council! We are looking for people who care about HIV treatment and prevention to join. The Council will give feedback on HIV research done at the Duke Center for AIDS Research.

Members will:

• Meet every other month with other community members and researchers from the CFAR
• Help plan CFAR community outreach efforts
• Review research projects and make suggestions on how to make them better for people in the studies
• Identify research topics that are important to community

If you know anyone who might be interested or have connections with community organizations, please help us spread the word! Council members do not need to reside in Durham.

For more information, follow the Link to Application. If anyone has any questions, they can email Lizzy Knippler at elizabeth.knippler@duke.edu

Applications are due September 30^th, and all applicants will be asked to schedule a 20-minute interview.

Share the Council member application.

Quantitative Methods in HIV Workshops

Thursdays from 1-4pm starting September 29th - register for Part I by September 15th

Registration is now open for Part I of the 3-part series of FREE workshops designed to provide HIV researchers with the quantitative skills necessary for analysis of large, complex data sets resulting from assays such as single-cell RNA-seq, flow cytometry, fMRI, etc. Each part of the series consists of 6 once-a-week workshops held on Thursdays from 1 – 4PM. The workshops will be taught in person at Hock Plaza. These NIH-funded workshops are open to graduate students, postdocs, medical fellows, staff and faculty. Non-Duke-affiliated applicants are welcome. 

These Part I workshops will teach you R language and environment skills needed for statistical computing and graphics. The R environment is an integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display, and knowledge of R is required for the Part II- Statistics Workshops and Part III- Assay Analysis Workshops.

In Part II of this workshop series, attendees will learn important concepts in statistics and perform statistical analyses using real HIV data. We will introduce different types of clinical research studies, perform exploratory data analysis with numerical and graphical summaries and introduce hypothesis testing, and appropriate methods for modeling different types of outcomes.

In Part III of this workshop series, attendees will learn skills for analysis of large, complex data sets resulting from assays. 

PART I: Data Science Workshops (must commit to attend all 6 sessions)

• Thursday, September 29: Reproducible Analysis
• Thursday, October 6: RStudio and Base R
• Thursday, October 20: Packages and Libraries/Intro to tidyverse
• Thursday, October 27: Data Manipulation and Visualization with tidyverse
• Thursday, November 3: HIV examples
• Thursday, November 10: More examples or Bring Your Own Data

Learn more on the CFAR website and register for the workshops

IMPAACT Spotlight Series talk featuring Dr. Dorothy Dow

Mental Health & Trauma in Research and the Populations We Serve

Thursday, September 22, 2022 |10am ET

Panelists

Mary Fabri, PsyD

Clinical Psychologist & International Independent Consultant focused on mental

health issues related to trauma, gender-based, violence, and HIV.

Geri Donenberg, PhD

Clinical Psychologist & Professor of Medicine, Psychology, Epidemiology, and

Biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dorothy Dow, MD, MSc

Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Duke

University and Associate Research Professor in the Duke Global Health Institute.

Zoom information

Meeting ID: 923 886 2064 | Passcode: 2064

Volunteers needed! Science Outreach opportunity with Jack and Jill of Durham organization

Saturday, September 24, 2022 |9am-12pm ET | Lyon's Farm Elementary School, Durham, NC

The CFAR Immunology Core in collaboration with the Center for Human Systems Immunology (CHSI) invite you participate a science outreach event with the Jack and Jill of Durham organization on Saturday, September 24th, 2022 from 9 am-noon at Lyon’s Farm Elementary School in Durham.

We will be providing hands-on-learning and science demonstrations for kids ages pre-K to high school at their annual kick-off event. Multiple stations will be available to highlight various aspects of science at age-appropriate levels.

Volunteers needed to help run the hands-on activities and/or talk with kids about science/your career. We are also looking for anatomy or immunology models or specimens to have at the demonstration tables. 



Please contact Kelly Seaton Kelly.seaton@duke.edu for more information. 

CFAR Immunology Core Workshop: Multiplex Profiling by Luminex

Thursday, October 13, 2022  8:30m ET | Hanes House 131 Auditorium & Zoom

The Luminex platform enables plate-based analysis of multiple analytes in a small sample volume. The first 60 minutes of the half-day CFAR Luminex workshop are for those new to Luminex or those that would like a refresher and covers the principles of the platform, comparisons to other immunoassays, commercial kit options, requesting assays through Duke / CFAR cores, and basic data analysis.

The remaining 2.5 hours of the workshop are for individuals planning to run or develop their own Luminex assays and covers experimental design, assay development and optimization, advanced data analysis, and future directions of the platform.

The workshop will be held in-person and streamed live via Zoom.

In-person registration will be limited to the first 50 registrants that select that option.

Learn more and register for the Luminex workshop.

Duke CFAR Special Funding RFP addressing intersection of HIV and Monkeypox deadline Sept 30

The Duke Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) is soliciting applications for grants of up to $60,000 Direct Costs for one-year research projects that address the intersection of HIV and the Monkeypox Virus.

Application Deadline: September 30, 2022

The purpose of this funding opportunity is to support research aimed at evaluating all issues at the intersection of the current monkeypox outbreak and people living with HIV (PLWH). Proposals on basic biology, pathogenesis/immunology, epidemiology, clinical care, vaccines, and sociobehavioral considerations, will all be considered. Proposals must focus on PLWH cohorts and not monkeypox monoinfections, except for the purposes of a comparison or control. Studies on persons currently on PrEP are also acceptable. Proposals that include efforts to counteract stigmatization are also of particular interest, as are those including evaluation of sexual and racial minorities, women, and healthcare access and equity. Collaborative proposals engaging non-traditional CFAR investigators at Duke are highly encouraged. The award is for up to $60K in direct costs for up to 1 year.

Please direct questions to cfar-dev-core@duke.edu

See the RFP or the CFAR website for more details.

A compilation of funding opportunities can be found on the CFAR website.

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