The CCASAnet Team
CCASAnet is an observational HIV research network funded by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the Fogarty International Center (FIC), and the National Library of Medicine (NLM).
The current CCASAnet Principal Investigators are Catherine McGowan, MD (USA) and Pedro Cahn, MD, PhD (Argentina). Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN, USA, hosts the network's Coordinating Center. Clinical sites are located in seven diverse countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
CCASAnet is a member of the International epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA), which is an international collaboration of regional networks like CCASAnet.
The original CCASAnet proposal was submitted in response to the IeDEA RFA. CCASAnet is one of seven regions that were funded by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Other funded IeDEA regions include North America, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, and Asia-Pacific.
Additional funding for cancer-specific projects is provided by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), for pediatric-specific projects by the U.S. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and for mental health-specific projects by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
Starting in 2019, supplemental funding was provided by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to fund the IeDEA-Sentinel Research Network (SRN).
The Fogarty International Center (FIC) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) have also provided supplemental funding for the Fogarty-IeDEA Mentorship Program (FIMP).
The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Brazilian Ministry of Health have co-funded the Regional Prospective Observational Research in Tuberculosis (RePORT) Brazil Network, which is a supplement to CCASAnet. This multi-year observational cohort has been established to perform translational studies of the pathogenesis of M. tuberculosis infection and TB disease. The cohort consists of 1188 TB cases and 1930 of their close contacts across 6 sites in three cities in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Manaus). Epidemiologic studies are also performed utilizing this data. Data and specimen collection are harmonized with RePORT-India, South Africa, China, Philippines, and Indonesia. Timothy Sterling, MD (USA) and Bruno Andrade, MD (Brazil) are the Principal Investigators for this project. Funding associated with RePORT-Brazil includes NIH U01 AI069923, R01 AI120790, R01 AI147765, R01 AI134430, R01 AI139406, F31 AI152614, as well as CRDF Global.