Université de Montréal medical professors Nicolas Chomont and Andrés Finzi have secured $5.75 million over five years from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to try to develop a treatment capable of permanently eliminating HIV from the body.
The projects led by Chomont and Finzi, both professors in the Department of Microbiology, Infectiology, and Immunology, are among six studies selected by CIHR as part of the HIV/AIDS and STBBI Research Initiative.
Conducted at the CHUM Research Centre (CRCHUM), the professors’ pioneering work aims to better understand and counteract the mechanisms that allow HIV to persist in the body.
Pinpointing the virus’s hideouts
For his project, Chomont was granted $3.75 million to continue the work initiated by CanCURE, a research consortium launched a decade ago under the leadership of UdeM professor and vice-dean Éric Cohen, a researcher at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute.
“Our goal is to precisely map the virus’s sanctuaries in the body and understand how it manages to hide there,” explained Chomont.
His research brings together 14 leading Canadian scientists, including Dr. Guy Sauvageau from UdeM’s Department of Medicine, as well as Petronela Ancuta and Dr. Elie Haddad from UdeM’s Faculty of Medicine. Additionally, about 20 international experts are collaborating on the project.
Today, antiretroviral therapy allows people living with HIV to lead longer, healthier lives. However, the virus persists in certain body tissues—such as the gut, lymph nodes, lungs, and brain—forming what are known as “viral reservoirs.”
With privileged access to tissue samples from living as well as deceased donors, Chomont’s team will focus on viral reservoirs in the intestinal mucosa and lymphoid tissues. They will also investigate why the virus resurfaces when treatment is stopped. Innovative clinical trials are planned, including the use of fecal microbiota transplants to reduce viral reservoir activity during treatment.
A novel detection and elimination strategy
Meanwhile, Finzi’s team has received $2 million to develop another innovative approach to tackling HIV.
In collaboration with Martine Tétreault, a professor in UdeM’s Department of Neurosciences and a CRCHUM researcher, along with U.S. partners and biotech company Immune Biosolutions, his team is working on a dual strategy to detect and eliminate infected cells.
“Most patients on antiretroviral therapy have the immune defenses necessary to clear infected cells,” Finzi said. “The problem is that their immune system fails to recognize these cells, likely because it doesn’t detect the virus’s envelope glycoprotein (Env).”
His team has developed a technique called Env-Flow to identify the cells that make up the viral reservoir. The next step is to “wake up” the virus inside these cells, prompting it to produce the Env protein, thereby making it visible to the immune system. To enhance immune response, the researchers will use synthetic molecules that mimic the CD4 receptor, a key protein in HIV infection.
These studies will be conducted in laboratory settings using cells from HIV-positive patients and animal models.
Source: CRCHUM
