More about the program and the institution: Since its inception in 1962, St. Jude has been moved by the pursuit of audacious goals, such as eradicating pediatric cancer, defining its genomic landscape, and longitudinal monitoring of over 4,000 childhood cancer survivors. As we’ve grown, so have our goals, and we’ve been a trailblazer in pursuing prevention and treatment of HIV in children and youth since the 1980s. Today, we continue to forge brave new paths in this work, and it’s our aim to do nothing less than bring an end to the HIV epidemic. We care for patients living with HIV from birth through age 24 in a multidisciplinary outpatient clinic with an on-site specialty pharmacy.
We have a longstanding successful track record of leveraging community partnerships as we promote health and research literacy and engage children and youth in clinical care and research. Among other things, we lead a coalition of 25+ community partners that share a common goal of optimizing HIV prevention and treatment.
For many years, our HIV clinical program was co-located with the Translational Trials Unit (TTU), established with the goal of taking St. Jude discoveries relevant to infectious diseases through early-stage vaccine and drug development. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our TTU was able to quickly pivot to conducting large-scale, community-based vaccine studies, and we have now established a center for clinical research education and studies adjacent to campus, known as the Translational Trials Center (TTC). We are strategically planning for the growth of the TTC, to increase translational research opportunities targeting participation of members of the community (“healthy volunteers”). The projected growth of this center and expanding research portfolio presents a strategic career growth opportunity for an early/mid-career clinical researcher to be a part of this innovative center expansion. The TTC with St. Jude resources such as the GMP facility will support the Department of Infectious Diseases early-stage vaccine and drug development needs as well as allow strategic collaborations with other external groups with a shared research focus.