UCLA-led team secures $17.3 million grant to expand research within a landmark HIV study

A team of researchers at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has secured a $17.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund the next six years of the world’s largest and longest-running study aimed at understanding the impact of health conditions that affect people living with, and at heightened risk for, HIV.

The funding will support the Los Angeles clinical research site (CRS) - the largest CRS in the nationwide network of 13 sites of the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study (MWCCS) - allowing researchers to track health outcomes and mentor undergraduate and graduate students and early-career scientists. The study team will also be able to examine several critical new frontiers in HIV research - including Parkinson’s Disease, epigenetic aging, and the lingering health impacts of the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires, researchers said.

“We are thrilled to receive this grant, which will enable our team to deepen our understanding of health conditions related to aging with, and without, HIV,” said Dr. Matthew Mimiaga, professor in the Department of Epidemiology and a principal investigator for the Los Angeles CRS of the MWCCS. “With the new six-year-long grant, our team at UCLA will explore new areas of research and maintain annual clinical assessments, biospecimen collection, and behavioral and psychosocial assessments.”

The project builds on a foundation dating to the early 1980s, when the late Dr. Roger Detels launched the UCLA site for what was originally the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS). In 2019, MACS merged with the Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) to form the MWCCS, which is now supported primarily by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), alongside 12 other NIH institutes and centers.

Today, the multi-state collaborative has roughly 5,700 participants. Over decades of observation, the MWCCS has generated more than 3,461 published, peer-reviewed scientific articles and amassed millions of biological specimens.

“The new grant will also let us examine the prevalence of Parkinson’s disease among people living with HIV, versus those without, and test the hypothesis that chronic viral activity and immune activation create biological pathways toward neurodegeneration,” Mimiaga said. “In addition, we will study the health consequences of acute exposure from the 2025 L.A. wildfires and chronic exposure to toxic heavy metals, such as lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium, looking at how these pollutants impact sleep disturbances, accelerated aging, viral suppression, and chronic conditions that include cardiovascular disease and cancer.”

Securing the grant ensures that UCLA Fielding School of Public Health remains at the forefront of HIV research and innovative science, experts said.

“This was a highly competitive process, and UCLA Fielding is very pleased the NIH and NHLBI recognized what Dr. Mimiaga’s team brought to the table,” said Dr. Onyebuchi Arah, a physician and chair of the Department of Epidemiology, and UCLA Fielding’s former associate dean for global health. “This is simply the latest example of the scientific community recognizing UCLA Fielding as a center of excellence when it comes to epidemiological research, and which continues to honor Dr. Detels’ legacy.”