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The Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication (CARE)

We are a consortium of leading scientific experts in the field of HIV latency from several U.S. and European academic research institutions as well as Merck Research Laboratories, MacroGenics and Qura Therapeutics working together to find a cure for HIV.

Some of the benefits of this multidisciplinary approach to HIV eradication are:

  • Do what no single laboratory or company can do by pursuing a comprehensive, cross-validated search for novel approaches to HIV eradication.
  • Allow multiple, complementary approaches which will result in the rapid validation of potential treatments.
  • Organize the workflow between the participating groups and to allow each of the researchers to contribute to several aspects of the overall research agenda.
  • Streamline the research-to-treatment process, leading to the rapid development of potential eradication therapies. 

Martin DelaneyThe Martin Delaney Collaboratories

CARE is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored program known as the Martin Delaney Collaboratory: Towards an HIV-1 Cure, named in honor of the late AIDS activist, Martin Delaney.

Martin Delaney founded Project Inform in 1985, a leading national HIV treatment and public policy information and advocacy organization based in San Francisco, and served as its Director until 2008. He was a member of the NIAID AIDS Research Advisory Committee from 1991 to 1995, served on NIAID’s National Advisory Allergy and Infectious Disease Council from 1995 to 1998, and also has served in other advisory roles for the Institute.

Delaney was an internationally recognized leader of the movement to represent the needs of HIV patients in the process of drug discovery and to accelerate FDA approval of promising drugs. He played a key role in the development of today’s widely used Accelerated Approval regulations and the Parallel Track system for providing experimental drugs to seriously ill people prior to formal approval by the FDA. He was one of the founders of the community-based HIV research movement and, through Project Inform, led the way to an unprecedented level of HIV treatment education available to both patients and caregivers. Delaney also led the Fair Pricing Coalition, which negotiates with pharmaceutical companies to assure that HIV medications are affordable and accessible.  He was also Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for AIDS Research.

Delaney had been a constructive critic of federal, academic, and industry AIDS research efforts and a featured voice in the media and at scientific conferences on AIDS-related topics. His writings have appeared in prestigious medical publications including The Journal of Infectious Diseases and the Journal of AIDS, and in a number of popular magazines. Delaney is also the co-author of Strategies for Survival, The Gay Men’s Health Manual for the Age of AIDS and editor of the Project Inform HIV Drug Book. His work and the history of Project Inform have been described in several books, including Acceptable Risks, by Jonathan Kwitney; Against the Odds by Peter Arno and Good Intentions by Bruce Nussbaum.

Other Martin Delaney Collaboratories

The NIH has sponsored five other research groups under the Martin Delaney Collaboratories. Each collaboratory is focused on a specific aspect of HIV eradication. The overall goal will be to combine the research endeavors of all six collaboratories for a multi-faceted and overlapping approach to cure HIV.

BELIEVE

Bench to Bed Enhanced Lymphocyte Infusions to Engineer Viral Eradication, George Washington University, Washington, DC

DARE 

Delaney AIDS Research Enterprise to CURE HIV, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

IC4

Combined Immunologic Approaches to Cure HIV-1, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA

defeatHIV

Cell and Gene Therapy for an HIV Cure, Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

BEAT-HIV

Delaney Collaboratory to Cure HIV-1 Infection by Combination Immunotherapy, Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, PA