Surrogate Markers for HIV Dementia

While substantial progress has been made at the basic science level in understanding the pathophysiology and development of animal models of HIV dementia, there are significant limitations in our current ability to predict disease onset, to give definitive diagnoses, to measure disease progression and to detect accurately the effects of therapeutic intervention. Thus the development of objective biomarkers is critical to further our progress in this field. Realizing the potential importance of biomarkers, the Food and Drug Administration is making a major effort to bring biomarkers into the mainstream of drug discovery .The objectives of this project are to assist in the development and monitoring of surrogate markers for HIV dementia. We will validate these surrogate markers as associative, predictive markers, and as longitudinal markers of therapeutic effectiveness. To accomplish these goals we work in close collaboration with investigators of ongoing clinical studies.