Joseph J. Eron Jr., MD
CRA Faculty Investigator, Infectious Diseases
• Professor of Medicine, Division Chief, Infectious Diseases
• Herman and Louise Smith Distinguished Professor
• Incoming Chair, Advancing Clinical Therapeutics Globally for HIV/AIDS and Other Infections (ACTG)
• Principal Investigator, HIV/AIDS Clinical Research Unit UNC
• Director, Clinical Core, UNC Center for AIDS Research (CFAR)
• Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health
About
Dr. Eron has extensive experience and success in conducting comparative clinical trials of HIV treatment and prevention over the past 30 years. He has led or been an investigator in many of the clinical trials that revolutionized HIV treatment and has contributed to the development of multiple antiretrovirals used for HIV treatment and prevention. He has been deeply involved, since 1993, in the ACTG network, which is a global NIH-sponsored clinical trials network conducting research for treatments to improve the management of HIV and its comorbidities; develop a cure for HIV; and innovate treatments for tuberculosis, hepatitis B, and emerging infectious diseases. During this time, he has held multiple leadership positions within the network, including Chair of the Optimization of ART (OpART) Committee, Chair of the Cure Transformative Science Group, leader of the ACTG Scientific Agenda Steering Committee, Vice Chair (co-PI) of the ACTG network, and he now the incoming Chair of the ACTG network, which includes over 60 clinical research sites globally. He is the Principal Investigator of the ACTG UNC Clinical trials Unit, with sites in Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Lilongwe Malawi, and Hanoi Vietnam.
As incoming Chair of the ACTG, he will head the ACTG Leadership and Operations Center (LOC), which is the ACTG administrative core. Starting Dec 2025, the ACTG LOC will be housed within the UNC School of Medicine, CRA. The CRA’s expertise and infrastructure will support Dr. Eron by helping to manage the ACTG LOC award to support over $25 million in protocol funding and over $11 million in core funding. The CRA will provide and oversee financial, subcontracting, regulatory, publication, communications, and meeting support in addition to coordinating and partnering with the numerous committees, groups, and institutions in this large network.
In addition to ACTG, Dr. Eron is also a leader of the UNC Acute HIV Infection research team, is a collaborator in the UNC HIV Cure initiative, and since 1998, has led the UNC HIV CFAR Clinic Cohort study, which includes over 5000 HIV infected individuals. He also provides leadership to national and international collaborative HIV cohorts, including the CFAR Network of Integrated Systems, the North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design and the Women’s Interagency HIV Study. He has had leadership roles on multiple pharmaceutical sponsored trials of HIV treatment and novel antiretrovirals and is considered an important collaborator by multiple industry leaders. More recently he has been part of the leadership of NIH-sponsored outpatient treatment trials of SARS-CoV-2 and Mpox.
His research has been extremely productive, with over 400 publications and counting in peer-reviewed journals focusing on antiretroviral therapy, resistance, pharmacology, transmission and HIV persistence and disruption of latency. His work was acknowledged in 2013, with Dr. Eron receiving the HIVMA HIV Clinical Educator Award.
Education:
- Fellowship, Infectious Disease, Harvard Medical School
- Residency, Internal Medicine, Harvard Medical School
- MD Harvard Medical School
- BS, Biochemistry, State University of New York, Binghamton, NY
Links to more Information on Dr. Eron:
Joseph J. Eron, MD | UNC Center for AIDS Research