National Institutes of Health say FIU HIV researcher has “MERIT”

MIAMI – The National Institutes of Health have given the prestigious MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) Award to Madhavan Nair, professor and chair of Immunology at the Florida International University College of Medicine and Associate Dean of Biomedical Research at  FIU.

The MERIT award will extend an existing grant Nair has from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award will double the duration and amount of the five-year $1.7 million grant through which Nair is studying the connections between cocaine use and HIV. The grant will now be funded for 10 years at a level expected to total approximately $3 million.

Nair is the first FIU recipient of the award and the only FIU researcher with five active NIH grants.

“The financial support from the National Institutes of Health through the MERIT award will allow me to pursue new and emerging state-of-the-art ideas in regard to therapeutic control of this entangled epidemic of HIV infection and cocaine use,” Nair said.

The money will allow Nair to continue his research into the different effects of HIV clades, or subgroups, on the neurocognitive impairments of people with HIV. Nair also is researching the role cocaine plays in the progression of the disease and the associated neurological dysfunctions in those who have the disease. The ultimate goal of Nair’s research is to develop therapeutic strategies to prevent those dysfunctions.

“These studies may lead to the development of novel strategies for preventing and treating clade-specific HIV infections, particularly in high risk populations such as cocaine users around the world,” said Jag Khalsa, program director and chief of medical consequences of drug abuse at NIDA/NIH.

Nair’s laboratory is located at Miami Children’s Hospital and investigators from the hospital’s Department of Neurology and Brain Institute are active consultants on the grant.

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Media Contacts: Madeline Baró at 305-348-2234 or mbaro@fiu.edu

About FIU:

Florida International University was founded in 1965 and is Miami’s only public research university. With a student body of more than 38,000, FIU graduates more Hispanics than any other university in the country. Its 21 colleges and schools offer more than 200 bachelors, masters and doctoral programs in fields such as engineering, international relations and law. FIU has been classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a “High Research Activity University.” In 2006 FIU was authorized to establish a medical school, which will open in 2009. FIU’s College of Law recently received accreditation in the fastest time allowed by the American Bar Association.