UC Irvine anthropology professor Kristin Peterson will travel to France, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Malawai and parts of the U.S. to begin a National Science Foundation-funded study of the ethical and scientific issues surrounding international clinical drug trials. Peterson will perform a three-year study on the implementation, effectiveness and perception of a 2004 clinical trial for the HIV drug Tenofovir. The trial was shut down due to ethical and scientific questions surrounding the study, and Peterson and her research partners will examine the causes for its termination. A preliminary survey revealed some disturbing information, according to Peterson. "Four out of five participants who signed informed consent forms didn't actually know they were part of a study," she says. "Many viewed the program as free healthcare and mistakenly understood that the 'preventative' drug would keep them from contracting HIV."   More »

Dr. Donald Forthal, chief of Infectious Diseases in the UC Irvine Department of Medicine, will receive $427,000 for two years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study how antibodies can inhibit HIV, the retrovirus that can lead to AIDS. Forthal is part of a national effort to study how the body’s immune system can be harnessed to produce an effective HIV vaccine; the search has hit numerous roadblocks because the virus is extremely effective at shielding itself from the effects of antibodies. This “return to basics,” Forthal says, represents a renewed effort to understand how vaccines can successively target this elusive, deadly virus.   More »