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NIH Announces New Funding for HIV Research

July 2011

“Three research teams focused on developing strategies that could help to rid the body of HIV are receiving grants totaling more than $14 million a year, for up to five years, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health announced.

“The grants are part of the Martin Delaney Collaboratory, a funding opportunity designed to foster public-private partnerships to accelerate progress toward an HIV cure. Delaney, an influential AIDS activist, died of liver cancer in 2009.

“Although antiretroviral therapy enables many people infected with HIV to effectively control their virus levels and thereby stay relatively healthy, some virus remains hidden in a latent or persistent form in cells and tissues where it is not susceptible to antiretrovirals. Each research team will pursue a unique and complementary approach aimed at eradicating these remaining HIV reservoirs. …

“The research teams receiving the grants include the following:

“Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) in Seattle, working with Sangamo Biosciences Inc., a biopharmaceutical company based in Richmond, Calif. — … scientists will attempt to develop proteins that directly attack HIV reservoirs, and they also will study whether a patient’s immune cells can be made resistant to the virus. These approaches for eliminating the viral reservoirs will be further tested in a preclinical model. …

“University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), working with Merck Research Laboratories, headquartered in Whitehouse Station, N.J. — … The researchers aim to enhance the understanding of how HIV persists in patients on antiretroviral therapy, and to develop small-molecule drug candidates and other therapies to target the viral reservoirs. …

“University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute of Florida (VGTI) in Port St. Lucie, Fla., also working with Merck Research Laboratories — … The researchers seek to define the nature and location of the cells where HIV hides, better understand the immunology of how these viral reservoirs are created and maintained, and develop and test targeted treatments that eliminate HIV reservoirs without broadly activating the immune system.”

More information is available: