UCSF-Bay Area Center for AIDS Research

Modified Project Summary/Abstract Section (Overall) Over the past four decades, UCSF and its affiliates have worked persistently on the domestic and global HIV/AIDS crisis, including in treatment, prevention, cure efforts, advocacy, co-infections and comorbidities. The now renamed UCSF-Bay Area Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), embedded at UCSF but with affiliate partners in the Bay Area, has served as a cornerstone organization to coordinate these efforts and advance HIV research across our campus, city, country, and beyond. Through its scientific leadership, multiple Mentoring programs, pilot grants in the Developmental Core, Scientific Cores, and support of early-stage investigators (ESIs), the UCSF CFAR has sought to create a vibrant, nimble, and responsive HIV research enterprise. The newly restructured UCSF Bay Area CFAR, under new leadership since July 2019, will continue its oversight by the 1) Administrative Core (including coordinating communications, monitoring and evaluation, events and stakeholder engagement) and its foundation and the 2) Developmental Core (including our acclaimed Mentoring programs). The UCSF-Bay Area CFAR has now reconfigured our expertise into three other Scientific Cores centered on 3) Basic and Translational Science (Immunology, Pharmacology, a new focus of Bioinformatics); 4) Clinical Research (including continued support of our dynamic SCOPE HIV cohort – a cohort that has been highly productive in fostering pathogenesis and translational research; a new Participant Referral Service from the large Ward 86 HIV Clinic , other clinical cohorts and CFAR investigator-led studies; and continued support of Specimen Processing and Banking); and a new focus on 5) Bio-Behavioral Research (with a new Prevention cohort; a Substance Use Research Program; and a Biomarkers of Behavior Program featuring a laboratory which will provide objective metrics of adherence and substance use). The five Cores were supplemented by two Scientific Working Groups focused on efforts to address external drivers of health and grow expertise in methods to fundamentally advance goals to End the HIV Epidemic; this Scientific Working Group (SWG) has now been reconfigured into an Implementation Science SWG to support investigators in this important methodology. In this renewal of the UCSF CFAR, we will continue to advance multidisciplinary, cutting-edge research in treatment, prevention, pathogenesis, cure and persistence, HIV pharmacology, clinical care paradigms, comorbidities and coinfections, adherence, and other relevant research on HIV/AIDS as we exit the first four decades of the HIV epidemic and work towards bringing it to an end.