AITS
AIDS/TB-Saar – Initiative to combine and strengthen the expertise in infectious disease research in the Saarland focusing on AIDS/TB AIDS/TB-Saar – Initiative zur Bündelung und Stärkung von infektiologischen Forschungskompetenzen im Saarland mit Fokus auf AIDS/TB
- Description
Infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS are on the rise worldwide, representing a global public health problem with considerable mutual interaction: TB is the leading cause of death of people suffering from HIV/AIDS, and HIV is the most potent force driving the TB epidemic in countries with a high prevalence of HIV. In addition, immunodeficiencies such as AIDS or drug-related immunosuppression favour the replication of a variety of other opportunistic pathogens. Although TB caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis is in general curable, early stopped treatment can result in new dangerous forms of TB: Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis(MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). These new pathogens spread rapidly from Eastern-Europe – today, Germany has already the highest occurrence of MDR-TB among all Western-Europe countries. Against this background, Saarland has taken many efforts during the last years to combine its expertise and to attract funding (EU, WHO, BMBF) to set up a competence centre, dedicated to profound knowledge on infectious diseases with a particular emphasis on HIV and TB. The AITS project will develop custom-made strategic concepts to strengthen the cooperation between researchers and enterprises in Saarland and support collaboration between regional, national and international partners. AITS will boost the development of regional technologies and support the dissemination and exploitation of results on the European and international level to promote Saarland as an economic global player in the field of research on infectious diseases related to immunodeficiencies with a particular focus on AIDS/TB.
- Coordinator
- Programme
- Other
- Duration
- 48 months (January 2011 - December 2014)
- Project funding
- € 632,500.00
- Project partners
- 3