August 10, 2023
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
May 12, 2020
The new video series from Medscape includes compelling stories of people living with HIV and interviews with UNC School of Medicine's Lisa Hightow-Weidman, MD, MPH, Kate Muessig, PhD, and Lina Rosengren-Hovee, MD, MPH, MS, of the UNC Behavior and Technology Lab in the division of infectious diseases.
January 22, 2020
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.
September 20, 2019
UNC researchers have created an injectable multi-drug delivery system that is removable, biodegradable and effective for up to a year in some cases. First author Rahima Benhabbour, PhD, MSc, says the ability to administer multiple drugs with this implant is an important advancement in this research.
July 16, 2019
A new study finds that nearly half of cells sampled from the cerebrospinal fluid of HIV patients had viral DNA, even though the patients had been on antiretroviral treatment for several years. The late Kevin R. Robertson, PhD, was co-lead author, and Joseph J. Eron, MD, is a co-author.