April 10, 2026
UNC Researchers Demonstrate Drug’s Effectiveness in Drawing Out Dormant HIV from Immune Cells
The study shows that drug citarinostat can awaken hidden HIV, advancing efforts towards a potential cure for the complex virus.
Tag: HIV/AIDS
June 26, 2025
Groundbreaking Twice-Yearly HIV Prevention Injection Approved by FDA
UNC School of Medicine’s Joe Eron, MD, an expert on HIV transmission and drug development, led a clinical trial on the new medication, which has the potential to resolve the HIV epidemic around the world.
February 13, 2024
New Trial Highlights Incremental Progress Towards a Cure for HIV-1
Cynthia L. Gay, MD, MPH, associate professor of infectious diseases, and David Margolis, MD, the Sarah Kenan Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology & Immunology, and Epidemiology in the UNC School of Medicine, published results of a clinical trial showing that vorinostat and immunotherapy may modestly shrink the latent HIV reservoir.
August 10, 2023
Gut Microbiome Can Increase Risk, Severity of HIV, EBV Disease
UNC School of Medicine researchers Angela Wahl, PhD, Balfour Sartor MD, J. Victor Garcia, PhD, and colleagues created a germ-free mouse model to evaluate the role of the microbiome in the infection, replication, and pathogenesis of HIV and Epstein-Barr virus, the virus that can cause mononucleosis and other serious diseases.
June 29, 2023
De Paris Receives Grant to Study HIV Vaccination in Infant Disease Models
The 7.5-million grant from the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will help researchers pinpoint specific factors that lead to a better immune response through HIV vaccination.
June 16, 2023
New Research Shows HIV Can Lie Dormant in the Brain
Yuyang Tang, PhD, and Guochun Jiang, PhD, in the UNC School of Medicine extracted living brain tissue to conclude that specialized immune cells in the brain can harbor latent but replication-competent HIV.
February 9, 2023
CDC-UNC Collaboration Yields Potential Long-term HIV Protection
Rahima Benhabbour, PhD, MSc, associate professor of Biomedical Engineering, led a successful effort to create an injectable implant that can release effective HIV PrEP medications into the body for six months in non-human primates.
January 30, 2023
Scientists Document Two Separate Reservoirs of Latent HIV in Patients
This research, led by UNC School of Medicine scientists Laura Kincer, Sarah Joseph, PhD, and Ron Swanstrom, PhD, with international collaborators, shows that in addition to HIV’s ability to lay dormant in the blood/lymphoid system, the virus may also lay dormant in the central nervous system, delineating another challenge in creating a cure.
August 17, 2021
UNC HIV Cure Center Awarded $26.2 million over the next 5 Years
The National Institutes of Health will award $53 million annually to 10 research organizations over the next five years to continue working toward curative therapies for HIV. The Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication (CARE), led at the UNC HIV Cure Center by David Margolis, MD, is one of two programs to have received funds for all three five-year grant cycles since 2011.
October 6, 2020
How immune cells can recognize, control HIV when therapy is interrupted
UNC School of Medicine research led by Nilu Goonetilleke, PhD, reveal how HIV-1-specific immune cells can recognize viral particles that have the capacity to rebound following interruptions to antiretroviral therapy. The findings have implications for new treatment strategies.
August 20, 2020
Farel presents at 2020 National Ryan White Conference on HIV Care and Treatment
Claire Farel, MD, MPH, Medical Director of the UNC Infectious Disease Clinic, and Co-Director of the UNC Center for AIDS Research Clinical Core, gave a plenary talk at the 2020 National Ryan White Conference on HIV Care and Treatment.
January 22, 2020
Researchers Reverse HIV Latency, Important Scientific Step Toward Cure
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 approach can expose latent HIV to attack in two different animal model systems with little or no toxicity.