NIDA announces recipients of 2012 Avant-Garde Award for HIV/AIDS Research

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, today announced the recipients of the 2012 Avant-Garde Award for HIV/AIDS Research. The three scientists, Drs. David Smith, Samuel Friedman and Jeremy Luban, will each receive $500,000 per year for five years to support their research. NIDA's annual Avant-Garde award competition, now in its fifth year, is intended to stimulate high-impact research that may lead to groundbreaking opportunities for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS in drug abusers.

Awardees are:

Project: Molecular epidemiology for HIV prevention for drug users and other risk groups

Dr. Smith's group will develop a novel system that integrates information regarding patient demographics, geographic location, drug use, and HIV viral strain in order to map patterns of new HIV infections as they occur in real time. A successful system would allow for the quick delivery of tailored prevention resources to affected communities based on their unique characteristics (e.g., injection drug use or methamphetamine use and sexual transmission). The ultimate goal is to stop HIV clusters from developing or expanding, particularly among substance using populations.

"Identifying and targeting HIV transmission clusters will allow us to make the most of HIV prevention resources," said Smith. "We believe this could be the key to ending HIV transmission in some of the most at-risk populations in San Diego and, in turn, other communities."

Project: Preventing HIV transmission by recently-infected drug users

Dr. Friedman's research team plans to identify people newly infected with HIV and link them to care, since the first few months of infection represent a period of high infectivity and risk behavior. Novel interventions that include community alerts and education within affected drug using and other social networks and venues, and efforts to prevent stigmatization of the newly-infected, will be developed and tested to prevent further spread within the community.

"Unlike many other HIV prevention and treatment methods, this technique will follow the virus to where it is likely to be transmitted," said Friedman. "We will start with drug users, but the network and community aspects of the project mean that we will also prevent transmissions among other high-risk persons if the infection chains lead us to them."

Project: Human genes that influence HIV-1 replication, pathogenesis, and immunity in intravenous drug users

Dr. Luban's group plans to develop new methods for studying the ways in which human genes can influence whether an exposed person will become infected with HIV or, if infected, how the disease will progress. These studies will guide future strategies aimed at preventing and treating HIV among drug abusers.

"Despite 30 years of AIDS research, there is still no experimental system for studying how genes actually function in humans to regulate HIV replication, pathogenesis, and immunity," Luban said. "Now that the number of human genes suspected of influencing HIV is skyrocketing, the need for such technology has never been greater."

"This year's award recipients proposed especially exciting research aimed at reducing HIV transmission and progression," said NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow, M.D. "We expect that this innovative research will provide new leads in the fight against HIV/AIDS in drug abusing populations."