A Healthy Baby Brings Joy to All at the Bay Area
Perinatal AIDS Center (BAPAC)
Photo: Noah Berger

Just over 25 years ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documented an ominous and perplexing new disease. Since then, HIV/AIDS has infected 65 million people and claimed 25 million lives, becoming the worst epidemic in modern history.

UCSF has been, and continues to be, a world leader in battling this devastating illness. In 1981, physicians at San Francisco General Hospital began treating gay men with the rare cancer Kaposi's sarcoma. Collaborating with colleagues throughout the campus, they called on every possible resource to understand and attack what was eventually characterized as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or "AIDS."

This collaboration and determination lives on in the AIDS Research Institute at UCSF (ARI), one of the premier AIDS research entities in the world. Established in 1996, the ARI coordinates the efforts of over 400 UCSF scientists in more than 60 UCSF programs and affiliated labs and institutions. John Greenspan, BDS, PhD, directs the Institute.

The ARI focuses on fostering scientific innovation in basic, clinical, prevention, and policy research to understand, prevent, treat, and work toward curing HIV infection. The Institute is also committed to rapidly disseminating its findings to physicians around the globe and training new researchers and clinicians to help mitigate and some day end the AIDS epidemic.

A timeline in UCSF's Catalyst newsletter ("25 Years in the Trenches") shows how the ARI's powerful multidisciplinary efforts have resulted in crucial findings in HIV/AIDS research.

In another milestone, the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) headed by Steve Morin, PhD recently observed its 20th anniversary as a worldwide leader in HIV prevention research and interventions.

The Catalyst piece also highlights just a few of the many compelling research efforts ongoing at UCSF:

• helping women with HIV deliver healthy babies at the Bay Area Perinatal AIDS Center directed by Deborah Cohan, MD.
• looking for clues to new HIV therapies by studying longtime survivors in the laboratory headed by Jay Levy, MD
• tackling AIDS in Zimbabwe by empowering young women in the SHAZ! Project directed by Nancy Padian PhD

In addition, the Positive Health Program's Steve Deeks, PhD, has assembled one of the largest cohorts in the country of "elite controllers"--those who seem to be able to control the virus without any antiviral treatment--and is perhaps the world's leading expert on salvage therapy, courses of treatment for patients who have failed on all of the standard treatment regimens.

Malcolm John, MD, leads the HIV/AIDS clinical program at the UCSF Medical Center, recently renamed 360, the Positive Care Center at UCSF. The Positive Care Center is pioneering a patient-centered,
comprehensive clinical care model and houses the Men of Color
Program and the Women's HIV Program; the Center is also developing a special program for people over 50 with HIV.

The UCSF-Gladstone Institute of Virology & Immunology (GIVI) Center for AIDS Research headed by Paul Volberding, MD, and Warner Greene, MD, PhD, provides core infrastructure support, pilot funds, and a comprehensive mentoring program to support HIV/AIDS researchers throughout UCSF. The UCSF-GIVI Center is a model for the 20 other CFARs located at research institutions around the country.

Scientists at UCSF's AIDS Research Institute have made amazing strides in mitigating the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The Institute continues to pave the way for future breakthroughs by translating basic science into preventive strategies, diagnostic tools, and leading-edge treatments for AIDS, and by conducting policy research, behavioral studies, and direct care services that are models for the world.

News Articles:
UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies marks 20 years
What We Can Learn from the Elite Controllers
As AIDS Drugs Fail Thousands, 'Salvage' Is Key