The main objective of the SUBE Program is to provide opportunities to investigator-professors and their students of the UPR system in the San Juan area for research and creativity in the biomedical sciences and their related areas. One aim is to permit young investigators begin to compete and possibly enter the mainstream of science. Those, as well as more established investigators will prepare graduate and undergraduate Puerto Rican students, many with social, educational, and culturally limited backgrounds, to compete on a more equal level in science with students from more gifted institutions. This research program provides the students of the UPR, San Juan area opportunities for research in the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Physiology, and Microbiology of the largest campus of the UPR system and its Medical School. In addition, institutions such as the Veterans Administration Hospital and CDC-San Juan Laboratories extend their collaboration to our students. The research proposals outlined here increase the communication and collaboration of the UPR system with its broad base of students with components of the P.R. Medical Center focused around the UPR Medical Science Campus thus affording students and investigators a greater diversity of research activities in the biomedical field. In addition to the student benefits mentioned above, the Program allows for young, beginning faculty to get a good start in their research programs with funding from the SUBE Program. It also allows for established investigators the opportunity to pursue their research in a more vigorous manner at the same time offering the students the chance to work with an established investigator. A further factor has been an increase in the curriculum in the various departments and collaboration among faculty.