Cure & Immunotherapy
Cure and Immunotherapy: Evaluate the potential for ART-free HIV remission through therapeutic interventions aimed at prevention, clearance, and post-treatment control of HIV reservoirs in infants, children, and adolescents with HIV and leverage expertise for evaluation of immune-based therapies including vaccines and bNAbs for HIV and related or co-occurring conditions in these populations.
Priorities include:
- Evaluating whether very early therapy with potent ART, in combination with broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs), limits HIV reservoir establishment in infants and leads to ART-free remission
- Evaluating immune-based therapies, including therapeutic HIV vaccines and bNAbs, in children and adolescents with HIV
- Examining combined initial therapy with ARVs plus immunotherapies, with and without latency reversal agents, in adolescents and young adults to rapidly induce virologic control and potentiate elicitation of a “vaccinal effect” mediated through antigen-antibody immune complexes
- Examining the role of the central nervous system and T follicular helper CD4+ T cells as sanctuary sites following perinatal HIV infection and develop studies to explore elimination of HIV reservoirs within these anatomic locations
- Identifying optimal virologic and immunological biomarkers to detect and quantify HIV reservoirs, and predictors of reservoir size and time to viremic rebound
Learn more about the current portfolio and prior research from the Cure Scientific Committee.
Committee Contacts
Chair: Deborah Persaud
Vice-Chair: Betsy McFarland
Operations Center: Anne Coletti and Charlotte Perlowski
Committee Members
- Ellen Chadwick
- Tariro Chawana
- Mark Cotton
- Aditya Gaur
- Nilu Goonetilleke
- Adeodata Kekitiinwa
- Alka Khaitan
- Dara Lehman
- Katherine Luzuriaga
- Allen Matubu
- Savita Pahwa
- Adriana Weinberg