Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS

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Sponsor: University of Alabama System

Location(s): United States

Description

The Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions (ATN) has the capacity for developing and conducting selected behavioral, community-based translational, prophylactic, therapeutic, microbicide and vaccine trials based on and adding to the information developed through the Adolescent Medicine HIV/AIDS Research Network (1994-2001) and the earlier years of the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network (2001-2011).

The primary mission of the ATN is to conduct research, both independently and in collaboration with existing research networks and individual investigators, in HIV-infected and HIV-at-risk pre-adolescents, adolescents, and young adults up to age 25 years. Prevention research, not the development of antiretroviral therapy trials, remains a large focus of research for pre-adolescents. Much of the research activity of the ATN focuses on collaboration with the Clinical Trials Networks supported by other institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including but not limited to the Division of AIDS, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) through coordination of research.

The ATN brings expertise and resources to collaborative protocol development that ensures feasible and acceptable study design as well as experience in recruiting and retaining this unique population. This initiative calls for a broad array of intervention studies aimed at the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of HIV infection in pre-adolescents, adolescents, and young adults at clinical sites and in their surrounding communities. These include pilot phase and formative studies as well as selected larger efficacy level interventions, with appropriate collaboration from other networks when needed. Comparative effectiveness and operational research, including program evaluation research, may also be conducted when necessary and feasible. This network designs, develops, and conducts multiple common clinical trials as well as pertinent formative and translational research studies collaboratively or independently when needed. The ATN strives to bring the required numbers of subjects into rigorously designed common protocols and thus address pressing research questions in youth more quickly than individual centers acting alone.