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three researchers in building lobby
UNC-Chapel Hill HIV researchers David Margolis, MD, and J. Victor Garcia, PhD, along with Rick Dunham from ViiV Healthcare (from left to right). Margolis is director of the UNC HIV Cure Center, which is home to Qura Therapeutics, a company formed through a partnership between UNC-Chapel Hill and ViiV, formerly the HIV research wing of GSK. (Jon Gardiner photo)

Finding a cure for HIV


HIV Cure Center

David Margolis, MD, and J. Victor Garcia, PhD, lead a team of investigators focused on the cure of HIV infection. Eradicating HIV is a complex challenge because the virus lives persistently in the body, hiding in latently infected cells that are able to escape the body’s immune system. Our researchers work closely with academic and industry partners in unique public-private ventures on the quest for a cure. The HIV Cure Center research portfolio is focused on reactivation of the latent virus combined with clearance strategies to effectively purge the HIV reservoir. Margolis and his team are recognized as the world’s experts, having been at the forefront of HIV latency reactivation and clearance research for decades.

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HIV Prevention Trials Network

The network is a worldwide collaborative clinical trials network that develops and tests the safety and efficacy of interventions designed to prevent the transmission of HIV. The HPTN has more than 50 ongoing or completed clinical trials in over 15 countries at more than 80 research sites. The HPTN strives to evaluate and implement cutting-edge biomedical, behavioral, and structural interventions to reduce the transmission of HIV. Institute Director Myron Cohen serves as co-Principal Investigator of the network along with Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, MPH, MPA.

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Center for AIDS Research

The Center for AIDS Research is a three-member consortium of three complementary institutions — University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Research Triangle Institute, and FHI 360. Each institution adds significantly to the breadth of the research effort, drawing on UNC’s five health affairs schools (medicine, public health, dentistry, pharmacy and nursing), RTI’s focus on contract and grant-funded research, and FHI 360’s  international contract and research portfolio, along with an international service mission largely supported by USAID and charitable foundations. The complementary strengths of these institutions make our CFAR unique and extend the reach of our activities. CFAR provides infrastructure to support four powerful approaches to understanding and combating the global HIV/AIDS epidemic: clinical research, behavioral research, research into mechanisms at the molecular level, and educational outreach.

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Martin Delaney Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication

CARE is a consortium of leading scientific experts in the field of HIV latency from several U.S. and European academic research institutions as well as major pharmaceutical partners (GSK, Merck and others). The investigators focus on the “target and clear” approach to elimination of HIV-infected cells that persist despite effective therapy. Researchers and collaborators received $23 million to extend studies in CARE until 2021.

Visit CARE

 

 

Preventing HIV

UNC marked a milestone in 2017 launching, for the first time, three HIV prevention studies. The AMP Study investigates an infusion of antibodies to prevent infection. A second study, called DISCOVER, is looking at the drug Descovy as an oral alternative to Truvada. The final study, called Give PrEP a Shot, is testing a long-acting injection to prevent HIV.

Christopher B. Hurt, MD is the UNC’s principal investigator for the Give PrEP a Shot study. He is also co-investigator on a National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study to address the risk of HIV, hepatitis C and sexually transmitted infections among rural opioid users in eight counties of extreme western North Carolina. Hurt is serving as subproject director for provider outreach and education, in partnership with RTI International and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

 

Behavior change through technology

The Institute’s Behavior and Technology Lab, or BATLab, seeks to facilitate health behavior change by conducting technology-based research on all aspects of sexual health including factors that impact the acquisition and transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. The BATLab is led by Domestic Division Director Lisa Hightow-Weidman, MD, MPH, and Global Division Director Kate Muessig, PhD. Current projects include AllyQuest, HMP Stigma, P3, Tough Talks, and Ending the HIV Epidemic: Integrated Technology. 

The UNC/Emory Center for Innovative Technology (iTech) is also housed under the BATLab. iTech is part of the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions (ATN) and is co-led by Lisa Hightow-Weidman, MD, MPH, and her Emory colleague Patrick Sullivan, DVM, PhD. iTech is the first NIH-funded center to use technology in innovative ways to engage youth living with or at risk for HIV. The NIH awarded iTech $18 million in 2016 to fund six studies. An additional $13 million was awarded in 2017 to support another four trials. iTech continues to grow, currently operating 12 studies and partnering with 22 institutions. The BATLab also serves as an enrollment site for several iTech studies that focus on HIV prevention or intervention: ATN 138: YouTHrive, ATN 142: PrEPared, Protected, empowered (P3), ATN 143: COMPARE, and ATN 159: ePrEP.

Visit BATLab  Visit iTech

 

 

Global HIV Prevention and Treatment Clinical Trials Unit 

Continuously funded since 1987, the UNC Global CTU is one of the leading HIV prevention clinical trials units in the country in terms of study accrual and enrollment of women and African-Americans. The unit oversees research sites in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Durham, and Greensboro, North Carolina and in Lilongwe, Malawi and Lusaka, Zambia. Faculty in the Global CTU have published landmark papers on the treatment of HIV and its opportunistic infections as well as HIV prevention. 

Visit Global Clinical Trials Unit

 


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    Supporting People Living With HIV In Vietnam

    Clinical Trials Day honors all that has been accomplished through clinical trials, as well as the people behind them. The UNC Global Clinical Trials Unit at the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases (IGHID) facilitates high-quality research, with investigators and research coordinators working to address the challenging questions that need answers, that impact the lives … Read more

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    UNC Global Clinical Trials Unit Launches New HIV Drug Combination For Enhancing Immune Response and Suppression

    The Institute for Global Health and Infectious Disease’s Global Clinical Trials Unit attracts leading trials from national feeder networks to study treatment innovations that can advance health. A new HIV study with the ACTG will evaluate the safety, tolerability, and antiviral effect of a novel combination regimen that includes therapeutic T-cell vaccines, two broadly neutralizing … Read more

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    UNC Global Clinical Trials Unit Launches HPTN 102: HIV Prevention Study for Cisgender Women

    Despite a decline in HIV incidence in women in the U.S., approximately 18% of new HIV diagnoses in 2021 were among women. Meanwhile, many cisgender women have not considered HIV PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) as an option for themselves when it comes to HIV prevention. Historically, studies of interventions to prevent sexually transmitted infections have excluded … Read more

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    The Continued Rise in Syphilis Cases: An Increasing Priority For Global Public Health

    April is sexually transmitted infections (STI) awareness month, and Arlene Seña, MD, MPH, a researcher with the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, is sounding the alarm about the importance of syphilis prevention, testing, and treatment. U.S. syphilis cases have increased nearly 80% since 2018,  a level not seen since 1950, while babies born … Read more

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    New Trial Highlights Incremental Progress Towards a Cure for HIV-1

    Antiretroviral therapies (ART) stop HIV replication in its tracks, allowing people with HIV to live relatively normal lives. However, despite these treatments, some HIV still lingers inside cells in a dormant state known as “latency.” If ART is discontinued, HIV will awaken from its dormant state, begin to replicate, and cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). … Read more

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    The Global Fight Against HIV is at Risk

    Hard-won gains in the long-running global HIV epidemic are in danger of being lost, argues Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, MPH, MPA, global director of ICAP at Columbia University, in a new commentary published today in Science. Co-authored with Myron S. Cohen, MD, director of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases at the University of … Read more

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    UNC-Project China Intern Focuses On ‘Pay-It-Forward’ Gonorrhea and Chlamydia Research

    As an undergraduate studying health policy and management, Dorian Ho‘s summer internship with UNC Project-China, a collaboration between the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases and Sesh Global, co-directed by Joe Tucker, MD, PhD, and Weiming Tang, PhD, gave him the chance to expand his worldview and contribute to novel research in Guangzhou, China. Ho joined … Read more

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    NICHD Grant Award Enables Researchers To Address Reasons For Vertical Transmission of HIV in Malawi As the Country Pursues Elimination Goals: Integrated Educational Cores Represent the Best of Capacity Building with Malawian Health Leaders

    Led by Mina Hosseinipour, MD, MPH, the NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), has funded the project “Preventing Infant Infections with Implementation Science in Malawi.” (PRI3SM). The program, in partnership with the Republic of Malawi’s Ministry of Health, comprises three studies to address gaps in prevention services, striving for elimination of vertical … Read more

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    Penile HIV Infection is Effectively Prevented by Antiretroviral Treatment

    Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine’s International Center for the Advancement of Translational Science and the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases have developed a new approach for the detailed evaluation of HIV infection throughout the entire male genital tract, HIV acquisition via the penis and the efficient prevention of penile HIV infection. … Read more

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    NIH awards HIV Cure Center $26.2 million over next 5 years

    The National Institutes of Health has awarded approximately $53 million in annual funding over the next five years to 10 research organizations in a continued effort to find a cure for HIV. The new awards for the Martin Delaney Collaboratories for HIV Cure Research program, initiated in 2011, further expand the initiative’s 2016 renewal from six institutions to … Read more

  • Study compares mortality of people entering HIV care with general US population

    HIV-related mortality has decreased since 1996 due to improved treatments and evolving care guidelines, but the extent to which persons entering HIV care have a higher risk for death over the following years, compared with peers in the general population, has been unclear. Joseph Eron, MD, the Herman and Louise Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine … Read more

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    Institute research sampling, 2018-2020

    By the spring of 2020, the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic caused many researchers affiliated with UNC’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases to pivot their studies to focus on testing, treatment and prevention of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Here, a look at some of the projects underway in the last two years.   Development … Read more

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    Researchers reverse HIV latency

    Overcoming HIV latency – induction of HIV in CD4+ T cells that lay dormant throughout the body – is a major step toward creating a cure for HIV. For the first time, scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill, Emory University, and Qura Therapeutics – a partnership between UNC and ViiV Healthcare – have shown that a new … Read more