About UMass Chan CFAR

The UMass Chan Medical School (UMass Chan) Center for AIDS Resarch (CFAR), established in 1998, provides key infrastructure to the community of investigators studying HIV/AIDS in central New England. The UMass CFAR is committed to stopping the AIDS pandemic, through prevention, treatment and eventual eradication of HIV. This Center facilitates investigators studying diverse aspects of HIV to achieve and disseminate breakthroughs that they would not otherwise have the resources to achieve.

UMass Chan CFAR's strength lies in the basic research of obtaining an understanding of the molecular interplay between HIV and the infected patient and how this interplay is altered by other opportunistic diseases such as: Hepatitis C, Tuberculosis, Malaria and Cryptococcus neoformans. Our investigators are committed to translating this molecular knowledge to better patient care.

The UMass Chan CFAR is an integral part of the quickly growing UMass Chan research community. Over the last two decades UMass Chan has rapidly grown into a highly productive, highly collaborative research enterprise with outstanding scientific resources and facilities. The Medical School receives more than $300 million per year in research funding. Our research community includes a Nobel laureate, a Lasker award recipient, two members of the National Academy of Sciences, two members of the Institute of Medicine and seven Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators. UMass Chan strives to catalyze our world-class basic research into scientific discoveries with high impact clinical applications and overcome the barriers in translating knowledge into clinical practice.

The creation of the Advanced Therapeutics Cluster in the new 480,000 square foot Albert Sherman Center to be opened in 2012, will harness the therapeutic potential of RNA biology, stem cell biology and gene therapy to benefit human beings worldwide. 

UMass Chan CFAR: Integrated in an Interdependent Research Community Network.

The CFAR community of investigators are integrated throughout the majority of departments and programs at UMass Chan and many neighboring institutions, which network together to provide a combined research strength that is more empowering than the individual research groups.

The CFAR is also integrated into a network of Centers, which include the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS), the Diabetes Center of Excellence (DCE), the Cancer Center, and the Office of Global Health. As a network of Centers we are poised to realize the full potential of our basic research and translate that into a clinical impact.