Grant: Operating Grant: Innovative Biomedical and Clinical HIV/AIDS Research

During the course of infection with HIV, a population of T helper cells, critical for immune response, are produced which have the viral genome inserted into the chromosome, but where the virus is completely shut off. These are known as latently infected cells, sometimes referred to as latency, and this latent virus cannot be eliminated from the body with current treatment because the immune system doesn't know that it is there. Consequently, HIV infected people must live the remainder of their lives on antiviral therapy, because a cure for HIV/ AIDS will require a means of specifically eliminating this population of latently infected cells. The research described in this proposal will investigate the possibility of using targeted alpha particle therapy (TAPT) to eliminate latently infected cells from patients. TAPT involves coupling a radioactive atom to an antibody molecule, which when injected into the blood stream, directs the radioactivity to a specific subset of cells that are recognized by the antibody. Clinical trials using TAPT are already being performed in attempts to eliminate some cancer cell types. For our research, we will use radioactive atoms coupled to antibodies that specifically recognize the latently infected cell population, in experiments using mice with human immune systems. We expect that this treatment should be capable of eliminating latently infected T cells, without significant effects on other cells in the body.