amfAR Consortium To Speed Search for HIV/AIDS Cure

Four teams of leading researchers receive amfAR funding to establish groundbreaking collaborative effort to pursue HIV eradication


Placing the search for a cure for HIV/AIDS firmly at the center of its research efforts, amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, on Tuesday announced the first round of grants to a consortium of leading researchers to develop strategies for eradicating HIV infection.

“amfAR has a long history of funding breakthrough research, and developing this consortium gives me great hope that we will catalyze the research for a cure for HIV/AIDS,” said amfAR CEO Kevin Robert Frost. “We believe that a collaborative research effort has the potential to dramatically accelerate the search for a cure.”

The initial round of funding for the newly constituted amfAR Research Consortium on HIV Eradication (ARCHE) includes projects in each of three areas that are widely considered central to HIV eradication:

• The search for a sterilizing cure that would eliminate all HIV from the body;
• The search for a functional cure that would achieve permanent viral suppression without therapy; and
• The characterization of viral reservoirs, the barrier that must be overcome to achieve a cure.

“There is a growing sense within the scientific community that the search for a cure for AIDS is ripe for a concerted research effort,” said Dr. Robert Siliciano, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University whose amfAR-funded study will focus on the potential to eradicate HIV. “We hope that both the research that our team will conduct, as well as this new collaborative research framework, will speed that process,” said Dr. Siliciano, who will collaborate with Dr. Janice Clements, also of Johns Hopkins University.