Therapeutics/Drugs

For viral replication, HIV viruses are dependent upon proteins, called proteases, to appropriately cleave peptides and form functional viral particles. Craig Crews of Yale University in the U.S. will attempt to exploit these proteases by designing a drug that will cleave only to HIV protease and release a cytotoxin that results in programmed cell death.

Anthony Mbonye of the Tropical Disease Research Network in Uganda will assess the feasibility and effectiveness of using private sector midwives to provide HIV testing and antiretroviral drugs in an effort to reduce mother to child transmission of HIV.

Lactobacillus bacteria, typically found in the cervix and vagina of healthy women, have been found to provide a natural barrier against HIV infection. Dr. Leonard Damelin will investigate whether anti-HIV molecules can be introduced via bacteriophages into existing Lactobacillus populations to further fortify this protective barrier.

Jord Stam at Utrecht University in the Netherlands will attempt to create "two-sided" antibodies to fight HIV; one side would attach to HIV, and the other side would safely deposit the virus in cells in which it cannot replicate.

People born with a natural resistance to the HIV virus have a genetic mutation in the CCR5 gene. Karthikeyan Kandavelou of Pondicherry Biotech Pvt. Ltd. in India will attempt to achieve targeted disruption of CCR5 genes, making an important first step in a new strategy to make people permanently resistant to HIV.

To test the hypothesis that immunization with a non-HIV antigen will neutralize the virus, Jinhua Xiang of the University of Iowa will determine if immunization with an envelope protein of the GB Virus C elicits antibodies that block HIV replication.

Vojo Deretic of the University of New Mexico in the U.S. proposed that autophagy, a process by which cells destroy cellular components and intracellular pathogens, can be induced through drug therapy to not only destroy the HIV virus in infected cells, but also to block its transmission from dendritic cells to T cells. This project's Phase I research demonstrated that autophagy can destroy HIV, block dendritic to T cell transfer of HIV, and promote antigen presentation by dendritic cells.

Ali Munawar of Molecmo Nanobiotechnologies in the U.S. aims to identify the specific protein that enables the HIV virus to access various sites within the host cell for replication. Identification of this protein will advance the development of a novel class of small molecule inhibitors that disrupt the HIV life cycle.

Ralph Albrecht of the University of Wisconsin in the U.S. seeks to develop magnetite nanoparticles conjugated to antibodies that will selectively bind to HIV-infected cells. Once bound to the infected cells, the magnetite is heated using an externally applied magnetic field; melting holes in the membrane of the infected cell and killing it.

John Altman of Emory University in the U.S. will research whether a drug which induces lymphopenia and is currently in clinical trials can effectively reduce T-cell exhaustion and induce immune-mediated clearance of the SIV infection.