May 2012 DAIDS Council-Approved Concepts
Concepts represent early planning stages for program announcements, request for applications, or solicitations for Council's input. If NIAID publishes an initiative from one of these concepts, we link to it below. To find initiatives, go to the Opportunities and Announcements portal.
NB: Council approval does not guarantee that a concept will become an initiative.
Table of Contents
Mucosal Environment and HIV Prevention
For the published request for applications, see the March 7, 2013, Guide announcement.
Mechanisms of Cellular Immunity in the Female Reproductive Tract
For the published request for applications, see the March 7, 2013, Guide announcement.
Research in Latent Tuberculosis Infection (LTBI) in the Setting of HIV Coinfection
For the published program announcement identifying location of peer review, see the December 20, 2012, Guide announcement.
Immunology Quality Assessment
For the published request for proposals, see the June 12, 2013, solicitation.
NIAID Specimen Repository
Request for Proposals
Contact: Kishan Patel
Objective: To continue providing critically needed comprehensive services related to operating the NIAID Specimen Repository (NSR), and continue to help:
- Secure, receive, catalog, process, aliquot, store, and disburse human biological specimens from subjects participating in DAIDS-sponsored cohort studies and clinical networks.
- Provide adequate cold storage facilities.
- Remain current on novel procedures for optimized storage of clinical specimens and be able to use state-of-the-art technology to ensure specimen integrity from receipt to storage in the freezers and from freezers to shipment containers for outgoing shipments.
- Provide (or use the current) computerized Specimen Inventory Database Management System (SIDMS) that supports the repository's functions.
- Develop, perform, and maintain Quality Assurance (QA)/Quality Control (QC) Program for the NSR facility, operations, stored biospecimens, shipping materials, and personnel in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and local regulatory requirements.
Description: This initiative will:
- Serve and support current and future epidemiological cohort study groups referred to as Study Groups. NSR will support the following ongoing NIAID Study Groups, noted in order of greatest to least numbers of stored specimens: the Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), and the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN). NSR will also maintain specimens from other NIAID-sponsored studies that either have been completed—such as the AIDS Vaccine Evaluation Group (AVEG), the HIV Transmission Network (HIVNET), the Jump Start Project, the Heterosexual HIV Transmission Study (HATS), the Division of AIDS Treatment Research Initiative (DATRI)—or from Study Groups that currently send newly-generated specimens to another repository, such as the Adult and Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group (AACTG).
- Support the short, moderate, and long-term specimen storage component of the domestic and international research agendas of the Study Groups. Retrieval and distribution of specimens is guided by the scientific priorities of the Executive or Advisory Committees of the various respective Study Groups. These specimens include peripheral blood mononuclear cells, serum, plasma, tissue specimens, and other bodily fluids or substances such as cervicovaginal lavage (CVL), semen, saliva, urine, feces, mucosal, autopsy and biopsy materials, and whole blood spots dried on filter paper.
- Support, through receipt or shipment of specimens, over 300 domestic and international laboratories that are either part of the Study Group (referred to as Sites) or laboratories collaborating with the Study Groups (referred to as external research groups).
Preclinical Development Services for AIDS Therapeutics
For the published request for proposals, see the May 31, 2013, solicitation.