The National Institutes of Health has awarded $1.53 million to the USC Rand Schrader AIDS Clinical Trial Group’s Clinical Trials Unit at LAC+USC Medical Center. The unit will be funded for seven years beginning on July 1.

“We are thrilled to be able to continue offering cutting-edge research therapies to patients at USC’s Rand Schrader Clinic,” said Fred Sattler, chief of infectious diseases at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “We remain enormously indebted to the County of Los Angeles for our long and highly successful partnership in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”

The Rand Schrader HIV Clinic, which opened in 1986, provides antiretroviral drugs to about 3,000 uninsured and mostly minority people living with HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles. For the past few years, USC has led the nation in enrollment of minorities into important AIDS treatment and prevention studies. More than 200 of its patients participate in AIDS clinical trials at any given time.

“The funding will enable the medical center, located in my district, to continue to provide first-rate health care to HIV/AIDS patients in the community,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, who wrote a letter of support to NIH on behalf of the clinic’s application for federal funding. “The NIH-funded clinical trials are truly life-saving for the patients enrolled, many of whom are underserved and would otherwise lack access to much-needed therapies.”

The Clinical Trials Unit already has begun enrolling new patients into these studies.
 

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