Areas of Research: HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C

The areas of research of highest priority for support in 2011-2013 are listed below. Collaboration with other National Centres for HIV and hepatitis research are strongly encouraged.

• Vaccines

1. Development of vaccine candidates to the stage of clinical trials or commercial development, together with the capacity to measure appropriate immunological outcomes in phase 1 and 2 trials.

2. Development of animal model systems to test candidate HIV, HBV and HCV vaccines.

3. Development of therapeutic vaccines.

• Antiviral Targets

1. Development of drug targets

2. Development of topical microbicides

• Diagnostics and Prognostics

1. New diagnostics for monitoring treatment programs in resource-poor regions.

2. Novel prognostics.

3. Pharmacogenomics.

4. Molecular virology tools for tracking the epidemics.

5. Laboratory tools to enable the assessment of drug toxicityselee