About
ARA
Mission
ARA’s mission
is to find and accelerate the development of effective treatments
for HIV and its complications. We do this by conducting cutting
edge research and clinical trials in order to improve the
longevity and quality of life for all people with immune deficiency.
Vision
ARA envisions
a future in which HIV and its effects are eliminated from
infected individuals, and a vaccine preventing new cases eradicates
the virus.
Values
• Urgency:
ARA finds ways of accelerating HIV research at every stage
of drug development recognizing that people living with HIV
disease are in need of more effective therapies now.
• Compassion:
ARA seeks to identify and develop therapies that improve the
treatment of HIV disease and the longevity and quality of
life for all infected people.
• Innovation: ARA conducts innovative scientific
research for the treatment of HIV disease and pursues paths
that others may not. u Independence: ARA conducts independent
research on the most promising HIV therapeutics available
without regard to economic potential.
• Partnership: ARA conducts collaborative pharmaceutical
industry sponsored research in order to advance its mission.
• Synergy: ARA partners with others to create
linkages between HIV and other major disease research, seeking
to identify and encourage synergy of scientific concepts and
therapeutics for HIV and other major diseases.
• Integrity: ARA conducts its work with the highest
scientific and ethical standards.
The
statistics are frightening. Fully 24 years into this epidemic,
neither a cure nor an effective vaccine against HIV/AIDS have
been found. Medical advances have been made and current treatments
have been effective in slowing the HIV virus, but these regimens
are too costly and too toxic, will not work indefinitely,
and do not completely eradicate the HIV virus from infected
individuals. The U.N. estimates that 40 million adults are
now living with HIV worldwide—last year approximately
3 million people died of AIDS. Reports show that HIV infection
rates among young people in urban areas are sharply rising,
as people relax their sense of urgency about the AIDS crisis.
AIDS
Research Alliance is working to find the most effective drug
therapies and to discard highly touted therapies that show
little or no benefit for treatment of HIV. This progress
is critical as we tackle HIV on all fronts: striving to
improve the quality of life for people living with HIV and
working with our ultimate goal—a cure for HIV/AIDS—always
in mind.
Our
mission remains critical. The next big breakthrough has yet
to be made. We still need therapies that permanently
prevent HIV disease from progressing to AIDS—and they
must be less toxic, with less dire side effects. And,
although progress has been made in HIV prevention, we still
don’t have a universally-effective vaccine against the
virus.
This
has led to ARA to prioritize its research agenda to:
- develop
more effective and less toxic direct anti-HIV therapies,
including therapies outside the three main drug classes
to which all currently available therapies belong.
- determine
how to best eradicate the HIV viral reservoirs that "fly
beneath the radar" of currently available drugs.
- develop
vaccines and microbicides that prevent the spread of the
virus.
-
help prevent the loss of immune function in recently infected
people, restore immune function in those who are more compromised,
and address questions of long-term disease management.
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Would
you like to donate to AIDS Research Alliance and be a part
of the team that funds important HIV/AIDS research? Click
below to go to our donation page.
With
your continued help, we will continue to make research advances
against HIV/AIDS.
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A
Brief History of ARA
The
journey that brings AIDS Research Alliance to 2005 is led
by people who decided to combine scientific rigor with activist
urgency, transforming a grassroots alliance of physicians
into one of the leading, nonprofit AIDS research organizations
in the country. ARA leverages privately raised funds to speed
up the development of promising new AIDS therapies, and ensure
the pursuit of treatment strategies deemed unprofitable by
the pharmaceutical industry.
By
1989, the AIDS epidemic had already ravaged an entire generation
of young men and women throughout the world, most of them
in the prime of their lives. In the summer of that year, 38
year-old Paul Rothman, a leading Los Angeles physician who
was himself infected with HIV, responded to the crisis by
pioneering a revolutionary way to conduct medical research
in the U.S.
Dr.
Rothman formed an alliance of other AIDS physicians experimenting
with various treatment approaches with the intent of pooling
their data and identifying the most promising experimental
regimens. This idea rapidly evolved to the development of
formal clinical research programs guided by prospective clinical
research protocols being implemented in the private practices
of alliance physicians. The small staff at the agency (originally
named Search Alliance) served the role of designing the studies,
coordinating the data collection of alliance physicians and
analyzing and publishing the results. This community-based
research model proved cost-effective and eliminated much of
the bureaucracy and obstacles inherent in traditional research
methods.
In 1995, the next major evolution of ARA occurred. The organization
centralized all clinical research activities in one location,
and patients could participate in clinical trials regardless
of where they received primary medical care. This allowed
ARA to identify and manage scientific, clinical and organizational
strategies with a staff of dedicated research professionals,
while maintaining affiliations with an unparalleled team of
physicians, scientists and academicians who are in the vanguard
of AIDS research. Today, ARA has expanded its team of partners
to include numerous large and small pharmaceutical companies,
as well as academic and government scientists, in the advancement
of its mission.
ARA's
work with industry now represents a significant portion of
ARA's efforts. For large pharmaceutical firms, ARA is a highly-regarded
clinical research site capable of rapid patient enrollment
coupled with exceptional data collection. For smaller, development-stage
companies, ARA has begun to provide full-service contract
research organization (CRO) services which include:
- critical-path-to-market
analysis
- pre-clinical
consulting and strategy
- clinical
protocol design and writing
- case
report form (CRF) design
- regulatory
affairs
- data
management
- biostatistical
analysis
- clinical
trial implementation/management
- study
report writing.
ARA's
independent drug development and clinical research programs
are now focused in three major areas: (1) strategies for eliminating
the HIV viral "reservoir" or the virus that continues
to lurk in hard-to-reach sites in the body (such as long-lived
memory T-cells) despite "undetectable" HIV levels
in the blood; (2) immune restoration focusing on enabling
the immune system to recognize and respond to HIV; (3) identifying
and developing anti-HIV drugs that inhibit the virus in novel
ways (i.e. fusion inhibitors, integrase inhibitors etc.)
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Independent
Research
Previous
independent research projects have included: a trial to examine
a hydroxychloroquine-containing regimen designed to be more
affordable for third world countries; a collaborative research
partnership with the Chinese (Shanghai) government in which
ARA funded and conducted a placebo-controlled, double-blind
randomized clinical trial of a Chinese herbal combination;
a clinical trial of the first combination of cytokines as
immunotherapy in patients with HIV/AIDS; a gene therapy project;
and the first lymphocyte transfer project in monozygotic twins,
among others. We are currently involved in investigating prostratin,
a promising compound derived from the plant Homalanthus
nutans (mamala). (Click here
for more information about prostratin.)
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BOARD
OF DIRECTORS
Bruce
W. Cochran, Esquire
Metropolitan Transit Authority
Chairman
Sandy
Bresler
Bresler-Kelly & Associates
Vice-Chairman
Kenneth
C. "Cam" Davis, Jr.
Vice-President
Bernstein Investment Research & Management
Treasurer
Bennett
Carr, J.D., LI.M.
Prudential California
Secretary
Nancy
Bresler
Timothy
Corrigan
Landmark Restoration
Paul
Alan Cox, Ph.D.
Institute for Ethnobotany
James
Michael Frost
Frost/Chaddock Developers, LLC
Mark
Allen Itkin
William Morris Agency
Arnold
Kassoy, Esquire
Partner
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
Douglas M. Kinney
National Tropical Botanical Garden
Kathleen
Scheinfeld
Landmark Restoration
Cary Stevens
Architect
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STAFF
Chief Executive Officer
Carolyn Carlburg, J.D.
Medical
Director
Stephen J. Brown, M.D.
Interim Associate Medical Director
Robert E. Winters, M.D.
Adjunct
Investigator
George C. Fareed, M.D.
IRB
Administrator
Kristin J. Allen
Clinical
Research Assistant
Corigan Castro
Director,
Development
Vincent M. Cummings
Clinical
Trials Coordinator
Grace Gachanja, RN, MPH
Director, Scientific Communications
Marjan Hezareh, Ph.D.
Office Manager / Volunteer Coordinator
Harlene Marshall
Clinical Research Assistant
Mario Mendoza
Development Associate
Jessica Patterson
Recruitment Specialist
Martell Randolph
Community Educator
Michelle Simek
Clinical
Trials Coordinator/Manager
Michele Vertucci, PA-C
Controller
Stu Walter
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