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Vanderbilt University, Meharry Medical College and the Tennessee Department of Health have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the Tennessee Center for AIDS Research.

Vanderbilt University, Meharry Medical College and the Tennessee Department of Health have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the Tennessee Center for AIDS Research.

The new center aims to improve the continuum of HIV/AIDS care in Tennessee and to advance personalized care in the treatment of HIV. First-year funding for the 2016 fiscal year is $937,000.

David Haas, M.D., a professor at Vanderbilt who has directed the AIDS Clinical Trials Group’s Therapeutics Clinical Research Site at Vanderbilt since 1996, said personalized care is “a huge strength” at Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt’s personalized care seeks to detect individual responses to medication and to consider important medical, social and environmental factors that impact the course of diseases like AIDS. The center hopes to better the continuum of care, the continued interventions provided at all stages of the illness.

“Our partnership with the Tennessee Department of Health is a real strength,” Haas said in a news release.

The center will draw on lessons learned from the Vanderbilt Institute of Global Health, which helped pioneer HIV care in countries such as Mozambique.

“We have the opportunity to take what’s been learned [there]… and bring [it] to the United States,” Haas said.

Haas, along with Duane Smoot, M.D., a professor at Meharry, will be co-directors of the center.

Simon Mallal, M.B.B.S., the Major E.B. Stahlman Professor of Infectious Diseases and Inflammation at Vanderbilt, is the primary investigator for the new center. The center will expand from the existing Vanderbilt-Meharry Center for AIDS Research to include the state health department.

Carolyn Wester, M.D., MPH, at Tennessee Department of Health, and Consuelo Wilkins, M.D., MCSI, the executive director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, are also key partners in the new center.

Organizers hope the center will expand training and research opportunities. Researchers at Vanderbilt, Meharry and the state can apply for Developmental Core Awards, which the center will distribute yearly on a competitive basis. This year’s letter of intent deadline is July 7, 2015.

Haas said researchers will be involved in small pilot and large multi-center projects aimed at preventing long-term complications of HIV infections such as heart disease and stroke, considering potential treatments that may lead to a cure and developing an effective vaccine to prevent HIV.

“We’re getting closer,” he said.