Yale researcher leads arm of HIV research collaboration



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Yale Daily News

A new initiative called the HOPE Collaboratory, which is funded by a $ 26.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and contains a program co-led by a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, could bring the world of research closer of a cure. for HIV.

Priti Kumar, associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, has been appointed co-chair of a branch of HIV Obstruction by Programd Epigenetics, or HOPE, Collaboratory. Kumar’s laboratory works in collaboration with a multitude of researchers under the aegis of a flagship program of the NIH, Martin Delaney Collaboratories for HIV Cure Research. The HOPE Collaborative includes researchers from all over the world.

“The exciting part about HOPE is that it is a huge company with 15 research groups, different countries, different continents, many groups coming together and really focusing on this one goal, which is to cure HIV. by silencing it and by inactivating it, ”Melanie said. Ott, one of the collaborator’s three principal investigators and director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology.

In many cases, people diagnosed with HIV are treated with antiretroviral therapy, but due to the ability of HIV to exist latently in cells, it often returns once the treatment is withdrawn from the system. ‘an individual.

Currently, HIV is considered an incurable disease – this is where collaborators like HOPE play a vital role.

“HIV is a particularly sensitive topic,” Susana Valente, another senior researcher in the lab and associate professor of immunology and microbiology at the Florida campus of the Scripps Research Institute. “It’s very smart. It evolves quite quickly. It’s a tough puzzle to solve, but I think we are now in a great place with this collaboration to answer a lot of questions and try to make really big progress in terms of progress in healing from HIV and in functional healing or eradication altogether. “

Studying HIV can be particularly difficult because, as a human virus, it can only infect and fully express itself in human cells, according to Kumar. This aspect of the virus has made it difficult to study its pathogenic effects in other animal species. Kumar is expected to play an important role in this project thanks to the research carried out in his laboratory.

Kumar’s lab developed a method to generate human immune systems in mice to create “humanized mice”. These mice could provide a place to test possible HIV remedies created by other laboratories in the collaborative. These potential applications led to the recruitment of Kumar for the project.

“Scientists from Gladstone, Scripps and Rockefeller have set up a collaborative project to use CRISPR and similar gene therapy mechanisms to cure HIV,” Kumar said. “They found my lab to be a great platform to integrate because we can test their molecules. We can use our delivery systems, and we can basically come together to develop the next generation of biologics that can potentially be used to target the provirus, the virus that is in genetic material. “

Kumar will also participate in other aspects of the program. The HOPE Collaboratory has adopted the motto “block, lock and cut” to describe its approach to finding a cure for HIV.

The objective is to “block” the virus by preventing it from replicating and then “lock” the virus in this silent stage so that it cannot resume its activity. The last step is to “excise” it from the body with strategies developed by Kumar’s lab using CRISPRs, molecules used to modify the genes of organisms.

“[Kumar] is truly the one who plays a decisive role in spearheading this line of research and is one of the leading authorities in the modification and use of gene therapies to fight HIV, ”said Ott.

Valente also stressed the importance of Kumar’s contribution, saying that she is “an incredible researcher” and that she already has many useful tools for this type of research in her laboratory, such as humanized mice and the CRISPR technology.

About 37.9 million people suffered from HIV in 2020, according to HIV.gov.



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