Major financing for HIV research carried out by two CRCHUM teams

Major financing for HIV research carried out by two CRCHUM teams


Nicolas Chomont and Andrés Finzi, two researchers from the CHUM Research Center (CRCHUM), see their research work funded up to $ 5.75 million by Canada’s health research institutes as part of the research initiative on HIV/AIDS and other ITSS.

Their two projects are part of a limited cohort of six subsidized studies in Canada.

With $ 3.75 million over five years, the project, controlled by Nicolas Chomont, is intended to continue the ducture initiative, a research consortium dedicated to the development of a HIV healing protocol and launched ten years ago by Éric Cohen of the Montreal Clinical Research Institute.

“In this project, we will try to understand in which fabrics are preferentially the viral tanks, by which mechanisms the virus manages to hide there, and also how to flush him there,” explains the researcher who can count on expertise of 14 other Canadian researchers involved in Cancure.

Petronela Ancuta, a Crchum researcher, is part of this team. About twenty other specialists, spread around the world, will also be asked. CANCURE will benefit from the recommendations of a Community Advisory Council formed by six members who represent the different communities of people living with HIV in Canada.

The team of Andrés Finzi, benefiting from a subsidy of $ 2 million over five years, envisages a new way of detecting tanks, then eliminating them using molecular mimetics of CD4, known to increase the immune response against the HIV.

He will rely on the expertise of collaborators in the United States, his colleague at the Cchum Martine Tétreault and his trading partner, Immune Biosolutions.

What is really going on in the fabrics?

Even if antiretroviral therapy (TAR) has considerably increased the life expectancy of people living with HIV, the virus has the ability to persist in the body, especially in tissues (intestine, lymph nodes, lungs, brain, etc. .).

Thanks to unique access to fabrics of living and deceased donors, the Canadian team orchestrated by Nicolas Chomont will focus on better understanding how HIV infected cells preferably persist in intestinal mucous membranes and lymphoid tissues.

It will identify by what mechanisms they participate in the viral rebound in the event of TAR stop, and how they can be targeted in a therapeutic perspective.

Clinical trials are planned over the next five years and will aim, among other things, to reduce the activity of HIV tanks during the TAR through a transplant of fecal microbiota.

An envelope case

Most people living with HIV and under Tar have the immune arsenal necessary to eliminate cells infected with the virus, but do not succeed.

For what? Probably because their immune system cannot detect envelope glycoprotein (ENV) from the virus, believe Andrés Finzi and his Canadian-American team.

“We have developed“ Env-Fl-Flow ”, a new method to detect cells that constitute the tank. This allows us to identify them and better characterize them, says Andrés Finzi. In this project, we will also test ways to wake up the virus in these infected cells so that it produces approx and thus facilitates its recognition by the immune system. »»

The use of molecular mimetics of CD4 will increase the eradication capacity of specialized immune cells.

Led in the laboratory, these research work will be carried out on cells of people living with HIV and on an animal model.

The research of the teams of Nicolas Chomont and Andrés Finzi ultimately aim to develop a safe and effective treatment to eradicate HIV.

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