University of California Los Angeles CFAR

Primary contacts

Karin Nielsen:            knielsen@mednet.ucla.edu
http://www.uclaaidsinstitute.org/

• HIV/TB Co-infection Projects:

• Dr. Marcus Horwitz Lab: Although the work does not specifically involve co-infection in the lab, the group is developing improved TB vaccines for HIV -positive patients.  We submitted a concept sheet to the ACTG last year for a Phase I study of one of these vaccines.

PI: Marcus Horwitz Email: MHorwitz@mednet .ucla.edu

• HIV/TB Researchers:

• Marcus Horwitz: basic research on TB/ HIV at UCLA; development of novel recombinant BCG vaccines for use in immunocompromised patients and basic research on TB alone.

• Robert Modlin: basic research on role of Vitamin D in susceptibility to TB and on mechanisms of T cell killing/inhibition of M. tuberculosis.

• Karin Nielsen is an HIV researcher whose group is developing a study for rapid diagnosis of TB in sputum in sub-Saharan Africa using a new technology for cell phone transmission of images. An additional project is trying to help introduce Dr. Horwitz’ vaccine product into clinical phase I trials in HIV-infected patients.

• Inter-CFAR Shared Resources:

• Marcus Horwitz: Small BSL 3 lab for experiments with M. tuberculosis, F. tularensis, and other select agents.  The lab is available to several others after hours; however, this has been rather challenging because a) the space is small and b) including others in the facility exponentially increases our paperwork for select agent work, e.g. inventories of all agents, records of everyone entering and leaving the lab, and escorts for anyone who is not approved for work on select agents.  The people sharing our facility will be moving into the much larger and better equipped MIMG BSL3 facility that is now opening.  This facility should have more space available for sharing and the administrative resources for all the select agent paperwork, something we do not have.  There is a dedicated animal facility for TB animal work.  However, it is very small and, generally, we do not have sufficient space for all of our own experiments.  

• Jerry Zack: The CFAR does not specifically have any TB-related facilities, Marcus uses animal models, as described above.  The CFAR does support a BSL-2+ immunodeficient mouse facility for infectious agents, would need BSL-3 for TB in vivo, so this likely would not be appropriate.