The American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) has announced its first research grants for 2012. The four $250,000 two-year awards are the latest grants among the more than $340 million the group has given since 1985 for HIV/AIDS education, prevention and treatment programs.

The recipient researchers are:

• A California Institute of Technology team that is studying whether HIV continues to replicate when a patient has an undetectable viral load and, if so, how.
• A Massachusetts General Hospital team that is focused on a newly discovered cell type that is resistant to antiretroviral therapy.
• A team at Ghent University Hospital in Belgium that is developing a new test that can show a patient's viral load beyond levels currently deemed undetectable.
• A Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) team that will seek to identify features of cells that are necessary to maintain HIV latency.

Leading the CWRU work is Jonathan Karn, a professor and chair of molecular biology and microbiology in the School of Medicine. Karn and his 10-person team are using specialized viruses to inactivate genes in these cells to identify targets for drugs that can treat and eradicate HIV, while not affecting anything else.

"The challenge in developing strategies for HIV is that the virus becomes silent. You have no way of touching it," Karn said. "The immune system can't see it. Drugs can't reach it. You have a reservoir sitting around in patients, even if they've been on intensive therapy for decades." During the next five years, Karn's team hopes to figure out how to reverse latency or prevent it from happening.

Back to other news for April 2012