Fighting HIV through a Better Delivery Method of Anti-retrovirals
BU researchers receive $2.7 million from NIH-NIAID
Björn Reinhard (left). Photo by Kalman Zabarsky. Rahm Gummuluru (right). Photo courtesy of MED educational media department.
Rahm Gummuluru, an associate professor of microbiology at Boston University School of Medicine (MED), and Björn Reinhard, a professor of chemistry at the BU College of Arts & Sciences, have been awarded a five-year $2.7 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to study ways in which anti-retrovirals that target the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can be delivered directly to lymphatic tissues.
Secondary lymphatic tissues control the quality of immune responses and are the predominant sites of HIV-1 replication. Virus replication takes place in secondary lymphoid tissues in HIV-infected individuals, even among those patients taking anti-retroviral therapy, primarily because of poor drug penetration in these tissue sites, especially when drugs are taken orally.
The researchers, with colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, plan to develop novel formulations of membrane-wrapped nanoparticles that encapsulate anti-retrovirals to selectively transport and target anti-retrovirals to virus-infected cells in secondary lymphoid tissues.
“There is an urgent need to develop new sustained release formulations that improve lymphoid tissue targeting and retention to eradicate virus reservoirs,” says Gummuluru, lead principal investigator on the grant.
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