The Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard received $10 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to move towards drug-free HIV remission.
HIV
HIV remains a major global health challenge, with UNAIDS reporting 37.9 million people living with HIV and 1.7 million new cases each year. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) allows people to suppress HIV viral load, thereby preventing both disease transmission and progression, with a daily pill. Though medical remission is a huge step forward, patients must remain on ART for the rest of their lives. Access to, and compliance with, daily treatments, particularly in resource poor countries, can be a barrier to effective HIV treatment and remains an issue for the duration of the patient’s life.
A New Grant
Xu Yu, M.D., Ragon Institute faculty member and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Bruce Walker, M.D., Director of the Ragon Institute and Director of the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research, have just received a $10 million HIV Reservoirs grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to understand the biology of those infected cells (as “rebound-competent reservoirs”) that persist in the body despite antiretroviral treatment and contribute to the viral rebound after treatment interruption. Joined by Ragon associated members Mathias Lichterfeld (Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School); Alex Shalek (MIT); Zaza Ndhlovu and Thumbi Ndung’u, (University of KwaZulu-Natal); Krista Dong (Massachusetts General Hospital), along with Steve Deeks (University of California-San Francisco) and Janet and Robert Silliciano (John Hopkins University) in a multidisciplinary, international effort, Yu’s team will discover how these viral reservoirs remain hidden while uncovering potential therapeutic targets in geographically and genetically diverse populations.
