What is the title of your project and what is it focused on?

The title of our project is “Impact of viral accessory factors on HIV-associated distal symmetric polyneuropathy (HIV-DSP)”. Our focus is to understand the inflammatory mechanisms that lead to peripheral neuropathy in patients with HIV.

How does your project align with the Center’s objectives?

The Center’s objective is to “improve our understanding of the interactions between HIV accessory and regulatory proteins and host cellular systems, with the ultimate goal to expand on therapeutic targets and treatment modalities for HIV/AIDS.” Our project aligns with this by seeking to identify HIV viral proteins and those from host cells that are critical for the pathogenesis of HIV-DSP.

What does your team hope to accomplish with your award?

About 50% of people living with HIV suffer from DSP. By integrating cutting-edge immune-neuro co-culture systems, state-of-the-art proteomics technology, and computational biology, we hope to identify the molecular drivers—on both the viral and host side—of HIV-DSP, which could lead to the development of new therapeutic strategies. In addition, our pipeline, in-and-of-itself, represents a technological novelty which we hope to apply to other disease areas.

What inspires you most about your project/research focus?

What inspires me the most about our project is the unique combination of technology, which has never before been applied to understanding the cause of HIV-DSP. Often, the application of new technology to a problem can reveal new solutions that were previously imperceptible. For example, we are excited to assess if HIV accessory protein expression correlates with disease status, as the expression of HIV proteins in the body has previously been associated with neurotoxicity. The combined use of tightly-controlled co-culture systems and physiologically-relevant clinical samples will give us an excellent opportunity to reveal the molecular drivers of this devastating disease.

What are your thoughts on the importance of continuing to build our understanding of HIV-host protein complexes and expanding therapeutic targets and treatment modalities for HIV/AIDS?

HIV represents a major burden to human health, particularly in underserved populations including black, Latinx, and queer communities. Large strides have been made in understanding the basic molecular biology of HIV, which have led to advances in the development and success of antiretroviral therapies (ART). However, there are still many aspects of HIV biology which we do not understand. Moreover, people living with HIV on ART continue to develop debilitating AIDS-independent diseases. Thus, if we are to ever truly cure individuals of HIV and lessen the burden of this devastating pathogen, we must first fully understand the molecular mechanisms of viral replication, the innate and adaptive immune response to HIV infection, and the consequences of viral replication on disease progression. Our research leverages our interdisciplinary technical expertise, our diverse knowledge and identities, and our community-based collaborative scientific approach to answer these questions. By continuing to build our understanding of HIV and expanding therapeutic targets and treatment modalities for HIV/AIDS, we hope to contribute to the global fight against this pandemic virus and to have direct and lasting impacts on marginalized communities.