Happy New Year from the Duke CFAR!

As 2024 comes to a close, we reflect on the incredible strides made this year in advancing HIV research, fostering community partnerships, and promoting equity and empowerment in health. None of this would be possible without the dedication, creativity, and collaboration of our researchers, community partners, and supporting staff. As we look toward 2025, we remain committed to innovation and connection—ensuring that our work continues to make a meaningful impact on the lives of people affected by HIV.

From all of us at the Duke CFAR, we wish you and your loved ones a joyful holiday season and a happy, healthy New Year!

News from the CFAR

D3C hosts a powerful World AIDS Day Commemoration

On December 6th, the Duke Collaborative Community Council (D3C) hosted a heartfelt evening of reflection, connection, and advocacy in honor of World AIDS Day. Held in downtown Durham, the event brought together community members, CFAR researchers, and advocates to share stories, art, and insights that amplify the lived experiences of those affected by HIV.

The evening began with a moving poem written and read aloud by one of our D3C members, setting the tone for the evening and calling everyone to action with the words, “Can we stand together? Can we help each other?”

Many of the talks focused on the theme of stigma, reminding us why fighting stigma is just as important as making progress in technology and medicine. The speakers emphasized the need for compassion, care, and support for people living with HIV and their loved ones. They also highlighted the personal connections many of us at the CFAR have to this work, and the heart we bring to our research and care.

The evening also centered art and creative outlets. One speaker shared her painting and explained the powerful symbolism it holds in her journey. We were also inspired by a video message from a former Youth Advisory Board member in Tanzania, who uses his creativity and music production skills to connect with others and support youth living with HIV (as seen in this video from DGHI).

A highlight of the evening was a collaborative quilt-making activity, where attendees contributed meaningful messages to create a tapestry representing our shared commitment to resilience, hope, and solidarity. The activity symbolized our togetherness and paid homage to the powerful legacy of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was created to honor lives lost to HIV/AIDS and to spark action (now available in a digitized collection from the Library of Congress).

Guests had the opportunity to engage with resources, enjoy delicious food, and access free HIV and STI testing. The event was enriched by the participation of organizations such as the Duke PrEP Clinic, Durham County Department of Public Health, El Centro Hispano, Fast Track Cities Durham, the LGBTQ Center of Durham, LILA Latinx LGBTQI+ Initiative, NC AIDS Action Network, Rainbow Collective for Change, the RCMI Center for Health Disparities Research, and Viiv Healthcare - who also brought with them a fun photobooth.

We are deeply grateful to everyone who joined us, shared their stories and talents, or hosted a table to provide resources. This World AIDS Day, we were reminded of the power of creativity, community, and collaboration in advancing equity and working toward a future free from HIV stigma and discrimination.

Help us recruit for the D3C!

The Duke Collaborative Community Council (D3C) is a dedicated group of community members from Durham and across North Carolina who partner with the Duke Center for AIDS Research to guide HIV research. The D3C provides feedback to ensure that research reflects the needs, concerns, and priorities of those most affected by HIV. The D3C also plan community events like the World AIDS Day Commemoration to help share information and fight HIV stigma.

As we work toward a future of positive change through community engagement, the D3C is seeking new members to better represent communities affected by HIV, including young adults, Latinx individuals, LGBTQ+ individuals, and PrEP users. Applications for new D3C members are now open! Please share help us this information with anyone you think may be interested, including community collaborators.

Share our D3C flyers or direct folks to our website to learn more.

Immunology Core Seminar & Workshop: Day of Spectral Flow Cytometry Education

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 | 9:30am - 4pm ET |Carmichael Building + Zoom (seminar only)

The Duke CFAR Immunology Core is hosting The Day of Spectral Flow Cytometry with BD, to help you reimagine the power and possibilities of spectral flow cytometry. Objective: to learn the art of panel design on the FACSymphony™ A5 SE Cell Analyzer using BD Horizon RealBlue™ and RealYellow™ Fluorochromes.

Tuesday, January 21st

Michelle Winn Auditorium (Room # 47-215), Carmichael Building

300 North Duke Street, Durham, NC 27701

Bring your data, panels and questions! There will be a morning seminar and an afternoon workshop analyzing high dimensional spectral data using FlowJo Software™.

Registration is required by January 15, whether for the seminar (morning) or seminar & workshop (all day). In person attendance highly recommended! There will be a Zoom option for observation of the seminar only. Questions? Please contact melissa.kerkau@duke.edu

Register for the event.

Sustaining Community Engagement Learning Series

Tuesday, January 28, 2025 (+ February 25 and March 25) | 3pm ET |Zoom

The HRSA HAB-funded Integrated HIV/AIDS Planning Technical Assistance Center (IHAP TAC) is reconvening its peer learning series, Sustaining Community Engagement, in 2025. This three-part series encourages peer-to-peer sharing on recruitment, retention, and sustained community engagement in jurisdictional HIV prevention and care planning bodies. Each session will have a short presentation and then breakout groups for sharing challenges with recruitment and retention and solutions to address.

• Part One: Successful Strategies to Recruit Planning Body Members: January 28, 3:00 pm ET
• Part Two: Successful Strategies to Retain Planning Body Members: February 25, 3:00 pm ET
• Part Three: Successful Strategies for Promotion: March 25, 3:00 pm ET

In the first session, participants will learn about collaborative integrated prevention and care planning activities, understand the importance of recruitment, learn the components of a recruitment strategy, and describe the benefits, barriers, and competition for the recruitment audience.

Register for the Part One Zoom session.

Register by January 15th for Statistical Thinking Workshops

Mondays in January - March 2025 | 1 - 4pm ET | Hock Plaza

Registration is now open for Statistical Thinking Workshops, Part II 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 Mondays from 1-4PM.

The course will be taught at Hock Plaza, and it is highly recommended that you attend in person to get the most benefit (parking is available). Those unable to attend in person have the option to attend virtually. The maximum number for the class is 36 – there is a waiting list when the limit is met. These NIH-funded workshops are open to graduate students, postdocs, medical fellows, staff, and faculty. Non-Duke-affiliated applicants are welcome. Completion of Part I-Data Science Workshops or prior knowledge/ competency in R is required to attend.

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 hypothesis testing, multiple testing correction, linear and logistic regression, and high dimensional modeling. The final day is scheduled as a design studio where participants can sign up to discuss their work and receive feedback from instructors and fellow workshop attendees.

REGISTER HERE by January 15, 2025

Part II: Statistics Workshops (must commit to attend all 6)

• Day 1 (Monday, Jan. 27, 2025) - Hypotheses, non-parametric tests, power, and error
• Day 2 (Monday, Feb. 3, 2025) - Linear regression, categorical predictors, interaction effect
• Day 3 (Monday, Feb. 10, 2025) - Logistic regression and classification models
• Day 4 (Monday, Feb. 17, 2025) - Random Forest and Penalized Regression
• Day 5 (Monday, Feb. 24, 2025) - High-dimensional predictive models, cross-validation
• Day 6 (Monday, March 3, 2025) - Bring Your Own Research: Study Design Guidance and Mentoring Session

See the Workshop Page for all the details.

Learn more and register.

More from Duke Quantitative Methods in HIV/AIDS... work with a funded summer intern!

The Duke Quantitative Methods in HIV/AIDS training grant is again offering paid internships for Summer 2025 (May – July). Now in its 7th year, the summer internship is designed for graduate students from quantitative disciplines to conduct quantitative research on HIV/AIDS projects.

We are seeking graduate students in quantitative disciplines, including but not restricted to mathematics, statistics, computer science, data science and engineering, to conduct HIV/AIDS research. Interns will be jointly mentored by an HIV research scientist and a quantitative faculty member, and will gain hands-on team science experience among some of the leading research groups in HIV/AIDS. Please share information about the internship to anyone who might be interested. Application deadline is Sunday, January 12, 2025.

Share the internship application information.

We expect candidates with diverse backgrounds that can support different types of projects (clinical, social and behavioral sciences, health services research, immunology and vaccine development, etc.). Past projects can be found on our website.

We are looking for project proposals from Duke HIV/AIDS investigators. The interns and their mentorship are funded by the R25 grant. If you have a research idea or data collected, we would like to work with you! Please complete this brief form if you have a project idea or possible project idea, and someone from our team would be happy to meet with you to help craft a summer internship project.

Submit a project idea to work with an intern.

Apply by January 10th for the Salk Institute Rising Stars Symposium

May 13 - 14, 2025 | La Jolla, CA

We are pleased to announce the second annual Rising Stars Symposium at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. This symposium is intended to recognize the accomplishments of outstanding postdoctoral associates who identify as underrepresented in the scientific workforce and/or who have contributed significantly to advancing issues related to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI), and to develop novel opportunities for recruiting faculty candidates from historically minoritized and underrepresented backgrounds to the institute. This year, the symposium will span 1.5 days. The dates for the symposium are set for May 13-14, 2025. 

We are seeking applications from postdocs in years ~3-4 of their training, prior to their formal entry into the job market. The selected candidates will visit Salk and have the opportunity to: 

• Present their novel research in a Symposium setting and interact with other trainees and fellow colleagues who are at the forefront of their respective fields. 
• Engage with and meet Salk faculty one-on-one and over dinner and be mentored after the symposium by a designated Salk faculty member who will be paired with each candidate. 
• Learn about the institute, expose them to the ongoing developments at Salk, and inform them of upcoming faculty recruitment opportunities  

All costs associated with the symposium will be covered the Salk Institute. The deadline for applications is Friday, January 10, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. PT

Learn more and apply.

Global Infectious Diseases across a Woman’s Lifespan Course + Women's Infectious Diseases Global Scholars (WINGS) Program

May 19 - 22, 2025 | Weil Cornell, New York, NY

Through an NIAID R25 Training Grant (R25AI183323), we are launching a didactic 4-day course which focuses on global infectious diseases (e.g. HIV, TB, malaria) in women. Lectures include topics such as: 

• Immune changes in women across the lifespan
• Clinical drug trials in pregnancy
• Racial disparities in women's infectious diseases
• Infectious diseases in adolescent girls

...and features many of our esteemed colleagues from the IMPAACT and ACTG networks!

To complement the didactic lectures, there will also be Methodology Workshops focused on study methods and measures specific to women's health, as well as best practices for informed consent and other ethical issues specific to women across the lifespan. The course will culminate in a half-day Scientific Symposium focused on emerging issues in women's health, such as the impacts of climate change and politics on women's health as well as providing care for transgender women. 

The deadline to apply is January 31, 2025. Early applicants will be able to take advantage of a limited number of travel/lodging stipends!

Learn more and apply for the course.

In addition to the course, trainees can also apply for a two-year Women's Infectious Disease Global Scholars (WINGS) mentorship program. The WINGS cohort will participate in a complementary hybrid in-person/online curriculum focused on leadership and professional skills development. They will develop peer mentorship cohorts as well as receive mentorship from Research Advisory teams comprised of senior researchers that have expertise in the scholar's research topic and/or study population.  The program kicks off at the Global Infectious Diseases across a Woman’s Lifespan Course at Weill Cornell in May 2025.

We are looking for postdoctoral candidates (MD or PhD) who are just beginning their research career in global infectious diseases research OR are more established researchers who are looking to expand into women's health.

The deadline to apply is January 31, 2025.

Learn more about the WINGS program.

Funding Opportunities

Letters of Intent due January 17th for California National Primate Research Center Pilot Projects

The California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) Pilot Program invites Letters of Intent for pilot project proposals to support basic and translational research using nonhuman primates (rhesus macaque and titi monkeys) for the 2025-2026 funding period. Pilot projects that address biomedical/translational research topics across the nonhuman primate lifespan and include CNPRC scientific research unit areas (Cardiorespiratory Diseases, Infectious Diseases, Neuroscience and Behavior, Reproductive Sciences, and Regenerative Medicine) are requested. Pilot projects should be innovative and lead to tangible results in one year. Full details of the call and additional information about the CNPRC Pilot Program may be located here.

The deadline for Letters of Intent is January 17, 2025. Full proposals will be requested from a subset of Letters of Intent. Applicants should note that this process is competitive at two levels: the Letters of Intent and the full proposals. Questions about the CNPRC Pilot Program may be emailed to Lisa A. Miller, PhD, Associate Director of Research: lmiller@ucdavis.edu.

Learn more about the funding opportunity.

NIDA RFA related to PrEP and substance use

NIDA is excited to announce the release of a new funding opportunity to break down barriers impeding the use of PrEP among people who use substances: 

RFA-DA-26-003 for R01 applications: The Research to Address Systemic and Structural Barriers and Facilitators to Improve the HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Care Continuum for People Who Use Substances and RFA-DA-26-004 for R34 applications. Applications are due March 12, 2025.

This funding opportunity addresses systemic and structural factors that impede or facilitate the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake and persistence among people who use substances in the U.S. and worldwide. Particular emphasis should be placed on strategies designed to benefit populations disproportionately affected by substance use and human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV), including but not limited to: women, transgender people, people with a history of criminal legal involvement, sex workers, and men who have sex with men, for whom PrEP uptake and persistence rates are the lowest.

Information about the NCI-funded SPORE program and HIV/AIDS-related Malignancies

During a panel discussion at the International Conference on Malignancies in HIV/AIDS (ICMH) this October, it was noted that a barrier to research in HIV/AIDS malignancies is the separation between the basic and clinical researchers and the difficulty in funding combined projects that span basic, translational, and clinical research. We wanted to make you aware of one such mechanism that exists right now: the NCI Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) program. This program was originally established to fund research on cancer in one organ-site but has since been expanded to allow funding of cancers with a common theme, such as HIV-associated malignancies (PWH). Below is some relevant information about the SPORE program.

Aspirational Goal of the SPORE Program and its Importance

Although the SPORE program has had many awarded grants in sarcoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and cervical cancer, none of these have addressed the important research area of HIV/AIDS-related cancers and cancers arising in PWH. In fact, the program has never received applications in these areas. SPOREs could be an important research mechanism for translating findings in the laboratory to testing in clinical trials for the benefit of cancer patients with HIV/AIDS.

SPOREs

The SPORE program is the premier translational research initiative for cancer in the NCI. In this program, the definition of translational research is as follows: “Translational research uses knowledge of human biology to develop and test the feasibility of cancer-relevant interventions in humans and/or determines the biological basis for observations made in individuals with cancer or in populations at risk for cancer.”

The program differs from the more well-known Program Project Grant (P01) mechanism in several ways. A full description of the program and its requirements can be found in the current SPORE Program Announcement (PAR-23-284). A summary of the key requirements is as follows:

• A minimum of 3 projects, each of which must reach a human endpoint during the project period. Projects do not have to interact with each other as do P01 grants.
• A team science approach with each project led by both a basic scientist and either a clinical or applied (e.g., epidemiologist) scientist
• Requires scientific collaboration outside the SPORE itself
• Must contain an Administrative and Biospecimen shared resource Core (with other Cores being optional)
• Includes Developmental Research Program (DRP) for short pilot or high risk/high payoff studies and a Career Enhancement Program (CEP) for investigators who which to refocus their careers to translational research
• At least one SPORE-initiated clinical trial/SPORE must be proposed for activation during the project period

The SPORE program would be a fitting mechanism for the study of HIV/AIDS-related malignancies, and we encourage you to consider applying to the program. We also encourage you to contact Dr. Igor Kuzmin (kuzmini@mail.nih.gov ) about a pre-application consultation about 4 months prior to submission to make sure your application is responsive to the SPORE Program Announcement.

Have news to share? Submit information for the newsletter and website.

Have a new member of your team? Were you forwarded this newsletter and want to sign up yourself? Please use and share this link to join the CFAR and receive all CFAR information and news.