amfAR HIV Cure Summit Discusses the Latest Scientific Breakthroughs

On Monday, November 17, nearly 200 of the leading voices in HIV/AIDS research gathered at 7 World Trade Center in New York for amfAR's HIV Cure Summit to talk about the search for a cure for HIV.

"Finding a cure for HIV scientifically is obviously very complicated, and unless you spend all day every day steeping yourself in the science of HIV, it can probably be a little difficult to keep up with what's going on," said amfAR's Vice President and Director of Research, Rowena Johnson.

To that end, amfAR gathered seven amfAR Research Consortium on HIV Eradication (ARCHE)-funded scientists to share their updates on the science around HIV, and the search for the cure. This area of research was infused with hope after the breakthrough of The Berlin Patient, Timothy Ray Brown, the first man successfully cured of his HIV. This was done via a bone marrow transplant about seven years ago, to cure Brown's leukemia. Scientists waited for a donor with the CCR5 Delta 32 mutation that hampers HIV's ability to replicate, and when they cured his leukemia, they also cured his HIV.

"You can't end the epidemic without the cure in your toolbox," said Kevin Robert Frost, CEO of amfAR. "When we first started talking about the cure, activists were angry about us giving people 'false hope.' But if you can't talk about you're going, how will you know when you get there? The result of Timothy Brown is self-evident: A cure can be done."

Brown's cure was a catalyst to organizing ARCHE, with the notion of connecting scientists from different institutions so they can collaborate on new ideas. amfAR donated $100 million over six years for their Countdown to a Cure in 2020. They have funded 43 grants to 86 teams.

Scientists discussed how they have created a number of different pharmaceuticals to attack active HIV cells in the body. This has been largely effective, as seen by the longer life expectancy of PLWHAs. But once a patient goes off his meds, the virus will rebound. Now, scientists must create sensitive assays to locate the "viral reservoirs" where inactive HIV hides and force it out of hiding, so it can be killed.

You could take a pharmacological approach, you could take an immunological approach via vaccine, for example, or you could take a gene therapy approach to cure HIV. Ultimately, it could take a combination of these three.

"Curing HIV is going to be one of the greatest challenges mankind faces," said Johnston.

amfAR's HIV Cure Summit tackled the science behind this challenge by breaking it down into four distinct presentations. Paula Cannon, PhD, of the University of Southern California looked at charting the locations of viral reservoirs via humanized mice models. Eileen Scully, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital explained how to understand how these reservoirs are formed and sustained.

Timothy Henrich, MD, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital is recording how much virus these reservoirs contain. And Steven Deeks, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, looked at ways of eliminating the virus.

EDGE will report on these complex issues in a series of articles this week, leading up to World AIDS Day. We hope they will enhance your understanding of the struggle to find a cure for HIV.