World AIDS day is held internationally on the 1st of December each year to raise awareness for the AIDS pandemic.
On Monday, students from our Sexuality and Gender Alliance and the Public Health Association tabled in the Gozzo Center to share information and resources about HIV.
We also checked in with Associate Professor Vir Singh who has a $495K grant from The National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study HIV cure strategies. He shared with us that his lab is currently investigating the NRF-2 signaling pathway to suppress HIV transcription, thereby making latent HIV resistant to reactivation and thus aiming to achieve a functional cure (drug-free remission).
His group has already published preliminary findings in the Journal of Virus Eradication and is currently preparing a manuscript for submission that highlights the long-term suppression of HIV reactivation by promoting the NRF-2 signaling pathway. He presented this work at the Retroviruses Conference last May at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Additionally, these findings were leveraged in his recent NIH R15 grant proposal, which was well-received by the NIH study section (reviewed in November) and may potentially be considered for funding. If funded, this study will be conducted in collaboration with investigators from the University of Rochester, leveraging their cohort of people living with HIV.
This study is aimed at understanding the in-depth mechanisms of HIV latency and evaluating the efficacy of NRF-2 inducers as latency-promoting agents for future clinical trials. Dr. Singh also plans to present these findings at the Retroviruses Conference to be held at CSHL in Spring 2026.
ACPHS remains committed to conducting research that changes the world. Check out our research endeavors as well as profiles of our researchers on our Research Commons.
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