UNC Chapel Hill has won a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a regional research center to study sexually transmitted infections.

The Southeastern STI Cooperative Research Center will be based at UNC-CH and headed by Fred Sparling, a medical school professor.

The five-year grant will fund work by faculty at UNC-CH, Emory, Virginia Commonwealth and Duke universities as well as the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, of Bethesda, Md.

The center will look for vaccines for the bacteria which cause gonorrhea and chancroid, each of which increase transmission of HIV.

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