A New Year, New Funding Opportunities
It’s a new year and a new opportunity to fund enterprising and exciting research in the field of HIV/AIDS.
We wrapped up 2015 on a high note, reaching the $1 million mark in funding to direct service organizations. But even more significantly, we reached the $10 million mark for total funding since The Campbell Foundation’s inception 21 years ago.
That brings us to a new report recently released by Funders Concerned About AIDS (FCAA) which found that global private funding for HIV totaled $618 million in 2014 – the most recent statistics available – an 8 percent increase from the previous year.
While the nation’s two top HIV/AIDS funders – the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gilead Sciences – led the way, The Campbell Foundation is proud to have once again made the top 100 list, ranking at No. 77.
This shows that The Campbell Foundation fills an important niche in funding up-and-coming young researchers who are working to obtain enough scientific data to allow them to move forward to those larger funding organizations that otherwise would not provide the money needed to support nascent research.
In 2015 the foundation provided the following:
A $100,000 grant to Dr. Eli Heldman’s research team at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel to continue their research to prove they can show efficacy by delivery of the HIV medication tenofovir through the blood brain barrier in mice using V-Smart technology.
Three fast-track local research grants for $30,000 each to The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Florida Atlantic University Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, and Children's Diagnostic and Treatment Center, to assist them with their ground-breaking investigations.
A $48,900 grant to Dr. Sahera Dirajlal-Fargo, a physician in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Rheumatology at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, to study the impact of inflammation in the lining of blood vessels on young patients with HIV.
A $60,000 grant to Dr. Jose Gutierrez, assistant professor of neurology in the Division of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease at Columbia University Medical Center in New York to determine the relationship between HIV infection and cerebral arterial inflammation.
Looking ahead to 2016, we are seeing an increasing number of grants in the pipeline due to reduced federal and private HIV funding. We also are seeing increased grant requests relating to the myriad co-morbidities and other health issues brought on by HIV. We look forward to continuing our role in assisting those researchers whose groundbreaking studies we hope will one day lead to a cure.