Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

HIV/AIDS is a devastating illness that affects nearly 60,000 Canadians and over 30 million individuals worldwide. Since the first cases were reported in the early 1980s, remarkable progress has been made in HIV/AIDS treatment. Over 20 antiretroviral drugs are now available, meaning that in most developed countries, a positive HIV diagnosis is no longer the death sentence it once was. However a vaccine or a definitive cure for AIDS remains elusive: Every day, 7,500 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV and 2 million people die of AIDS each year. HIV therapy, where available, requires a lifelong commitment and can be a complicated proposition. The virus can quickly mutate and become drug-resistant. In the most serious cases, patients can develop resistance to all drug groups, leaving no effective treatment options. Thankfully, in the last two years, new classes of antiretrovirals have been developed and approved for use in these most extreme cases. However, in order to identify patients who would benefit the most from these new treatments, expensive and complicated screening tests need to be performed. These tests can take several weeks to complete, delaying patients' access to these life-saving drugs. In this application I propose to apply some of the most state-of-the art DNA sequencing technologies to develop novel genotypic screening procedures for newly-developed HIV drugs. My research will directly affect the lives of HIV-positive Canadians by providing more accurate, cost-effective tests that can significantly expand and accelerate access to these novel therapies.