$2.3 Million Grant Awarded for Study of Anti-HIV Drugs

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Gene Morse, Pharm.D., professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice in the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, has received a $2.3 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to investigate interactions of antiretrovirals, the major drugs used in the treatment of HIV, in AIDS patients who are substance abusers and those who are not.

One goal of the grant is to investigate the more complex pharmacology involved in AIDS patients who are substance abusers and to determine its effect on anti-retroviral drugs. (In fact, interactions of AIDS drugs with each other and with other drugs patients take, including those as ordinary as birth control pills, have not been studied.)

With the grant, UB researchers will develop the first therapeutic drug-monitoring registry, which monitors blood levels of various drugs. Morse, director of the Laboratory for Antiviral Research at UB, a Pharmacology Support Laboratory for the National Institutes of Health Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group, is principal investigator on the study and is working with Montefiore in New York City, Univrsity of Miami, University of Rochester and Case Western Reserve University.