Grant: Operating Grant - PA: CHVI Vaccine Discovery and Social Research

An estimated 34 million people are living with HIV/AIDS with 2.6 million new infections in 2010, of which 50% of new HIV-1 infections occurred in women. There is currently no effective vaccine to prevent HIV-1 infection. However, not everyone exposed to HIV will get infected. Studies of a group of sex workers in Nairobi Kenya have shown that a subgroup of them remain uninfected by HIV-1 despite repeated high risk sex work. Understanding of the naturally occurring protection against heterosexual transmission of HIV-1 in these individuals can identify new ways to prevent this route of transmission. FREM1 is a gene located on the cell surface and a variant of FREM1 has been shown to play an important role to increase cells response to HIV-1 infection. In previous studies we have shown that a higher proportion of HIV-1 resistant Kenyan sex workers has a variant of FREM1 and higher level of FREM1 protein has been detected in the vaginal cervix tissue where heterosexual transmission in women occur. These suggest that FREM1 might play an important role in HIV-1 transmission and FREM1 variant might help to reduce HIV-1 infection. In this proposal we will determine the role of FREM1 in HIV transmission and how the variant of FREM1 can protect these HIV resistant sex workers against HIV-1 infection. This will help to develop new method to prevent heterosexual HIV transmission.