UNC Professor of Medicine Joseph Eron, MD, has been elected vice chair of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). Established by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1987, the ACTG is the largest network of research sites in the world dedicated to finding a cure for HIV and the virus’s opportunistic infections.

“The ACTG is an incredible scientific group that has been a leader in HIV clinical and translational research for 30 years,” said Eron. “I am honored, thrilled and humbled to serve as the vice chair of the group and I will do my best to continue moving the research forward with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of people living with HIV.”

With the ACTG for 25 years, Eron previously chaired the network’s HIV Reservoirs and Viral Eradication Transformative Science Group. He has worked extensively in the area of HIV drug development and led or participated in original studies of many antiretroviral therapies. His first clinical trial in the 1990s demonstrated the life-saving benefits of combination antiretroviral therapy and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Since then, Eron has authored more than 300 publications in peer-reviewed journals focusing on antiretroviral therapy, resistance, pharmacology, transmission, HIV persistence and disruption of latency.

At UNC, he treats people living with HIV at the Infectious Diseases Clinic in the N.C. Memorial Hospital. He serves as vice chief for the Division of Infectious Diseases and director of the UNC Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Clinical Core.

Eron has received many accolades throughout his career. He received UNC’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2005. He was awarded the HIV Medicine Association’s HIV Clinical Educator Award in 2013. In 2016, the North Carolina Community AIDS Fund presented Eron with its Red Ribbon Award for Outstanding Achievement, marking the 20th anniversary of his discovery of combination therapy for the treatment of HIV.