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Led by Cindy Gay, MD, clinical researchers in the UNC Division of Infectious Diseases are leaning on years of experience and expertise to partake in a large phase 3 clinical trial for a COVID-19 vaccine. Ronald Falk, MD, Chair of the UNC Department of Medicine, is one of the trial’s first participants.


The potential Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is one of a handful of treatment and prevention studies that recently launched at UNC to fight COVID-19. The National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases created the COVID Prevention Network (CoVPN) to coordinate the multiple studies. The network maximizes the strength of four existing clinical trials networks established to study HIV prevention, including the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) based at Family Health International in Durham, NC. Myron Cohen, director of UNC’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases (IGHID), is co-principal investigator for HPTN and a leader of the new CoVPN.

“We’re building on well-established networks,” Gay says. “Everyone in CoVPN has great experience in large, multi-site studies.”

Read more about the vaccine trial here.