CAPRISA: Establishing a Research Centre to Undertake HIV Clinical Trials

Abstract

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa is amongst the worst in the world. As South Africa grappled with the exploding HIV epidemic in the 1990s, a group of South African AIDS researchers came together in 1996 to conduct basic science research on acute infection in seroconvertors from HIV prevention trials. This group, comprising epidemiologists, clinical trialists, virologists, and immunologists became the nidus upon which an application for a new AIDS research centre was submitted to the National Institutes for Health. This successful grant created a new opportunity for this group to combine with several others from some of the major research institutions in South Africa and the USA, leading to the creation of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA). CAPRISA was established in 2002 as an independent not-for-profit multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional AIDS Research Centre. The main goals of CAPRISA are to conduct locally responsive and globally relevant research to find public health solutions to the HIV epidemic, while building the research infrastructure and providing research training opportunities for the next generation of scientists. CAPRISA is recognised as a global Centre of Excellence, producing high impact research on HIV prevention and treatment. CAPRISA is a UNAIDS Collaborating Centre on HIV Research and Policy, a MRC Collaborating Centre for HIV and TB Research, a MRC-CAPRISA HIV-TB Pathogenesis and Treatment Research Unit and a NRF-DST Centre of Excellence in HIV Prevention.