Project: Identification of Novel HIV Reactivation Agents: Towards Building Translational HIV Cure Research Infrastructure in Ghana

Acronym	H-CRIS (Reference Number: TMA2017SF-1955)
Duration	01/05/2019 - 30/04/2024
Project Topic	HIV continues to be a major public health problem in Africa. Although combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) has reduced mortality and improved lifespan, it does not provide cure for the disease. Patients must take medications daily for the rest of their ives with attendant side effects, unsustainable costs, development of resistance. The main obstacle to HIV cure is the persistence of the provirus in resting CD4+ T cells, which act as a reservoir to produce virus once treatment is interrupted. Of all the approaches being investigated to cure HIV, the 'shock and kill' approach is the most promising. This approach seeks to reactivate and kill the T cells harboring the virus, while patient are on cART, with the idea that patients could then stop treatment after the reservoir cells are eliminated. Despite some modest successes, this approach has not been able to reduce the size of the HIV reservoir significantly, partly due to inefficient reactivation. Since HIV replication is controlled by surrounding chromatin (epigentics), we hypothesize that epigenetic modifying compounds will be more effective reactivation (latency reversing) agents. Here, we propose to screen an epigenetic library of compounds, select the most effective and evaluate them in resting T cells isolated from HIV patients on cART. To do this, we will follow a cohort of patients, measure their viral loads and select those who have virologic suppression for the reactivation studies. This study will provide useful information on virologic suppression among Ghanaian patients, effectiveness of current therapy and discover novel compounds for the 'shock and kill' approach to HIV cure. The study will also provide the opportunity to establish HIV cure infrastructure in Africa, train graduate students and assemble a repository of samples for future HIV related research and training.
Network	EDCTP2
Call	Senior Fellowships 2017

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	University of Ghana	Coordinator	Ghana