Grant: Team Grant: HIV/AIDS Biomedical and Clinical Research - Cure - Focused

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected more than 77 million people since the beginning of the epidemic. In the absence of treatment, HIV causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which has already killed more than 35.4 million people worldwide. Available treatments control viral replication in infected individuals but are unable to eradicate the virus. This is because the virus "hides" in some immune cells and establishes a reservoir from which it can replicate again as soon as the treatment is interrupted. The goal of this proposal is to evaluate the potential of an innovative strategy to decrease the size of the viral reservoir and ultimately eliminate it. We found that the majority of HIV-infected individuals have all the elements required to kill infected cells but fail to do so due to the ability of the virus to cover one of its most vulnerable parts (Env). By using certain small molecules we were able to uncover parts of Env and showed that infected cells can be easily eliminated. In this proposal we will test if this strategy is able to eliminate HIV-infected cells isolated from patients (ex-vivo) and in an animal model (in-vivo). Altogether, this strategy will put us a step closer towards HIV eradication.