amfAR Awards $2.4 Million in New HIV Cure-Focused Research Grants

Research teams in North America, Africa, and Australia will receive support to test a range of bold and innovative cure strategies

NEW YORK, October 16, 2025 — amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, announced a new round of grants Thursday to research teams across three continents targeting novel HIV cure strategies. It marks the first time amfAR has funded five grants in a single round, reaffirming the organization’s commitment to funding bold, innovative research as access to funding has become increasingly limited for researchers.

“amfAR is proud to meet the moment and step up its support for research and the HIV community with this unprecedented suite of five new grants worth a total of $2.4 million,” amfAR Vice President and Director of Research Dr. Andrea Gramatica said. “Each of these projects show enormous potential and the brilliant researchers bring out-of-the-box solutions to the decades-old problem of a cure for HIV.”

Each grant is worth $480,000 over two years.

A study by Francesco Simonetti, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University hinges on a “self-destruct” mechanism present in cells infected by HIV. Dr. Simonetti, alongside co-investigators Priya Pal, MD, PhD, and Linos Vandekerckhove, MD, PhD, has found an existing HIV drug, efavirenz, can induce cell death (pyroptosis) in these HIV-infected cells and reduce the size of the HIV reservoir. The researchers plan to test how effective the process is and whether new compounds can amplify this effect.

Rachel Rutishauser, MD, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and Brad Jones, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medicine, will refine CAR T cell therapy using a new type of engineered T cell called TRAC-HIT. While conventional CAR T cell therapy involves collecting cells from a person’s body, genetically modifying them to recognize and target disease, and reinfusing them into the body, Drs. Rutishauser and Jones will reprogram cells inside a person’s body. This method should create long-lasting, HIV-resistant immune cells with an approach that could be scaled up to meet global needs.

Mirko Paiardini, PhD, of Emory University is testing the cancer drug tazemetostat’s ability to prevent latent HIV from hiding from the body’s immune system. This approach has already shown promise in mouse models and will be tested on simian immunodeficiency virus, a close cousin of human HIV infection.

Also targeting the HIV reservoir, Nadia Roan, PhD, of the Gladstone Institutes and Possu Huang, PhD, of Stanford University will unleash an engineered protein they’ve developed called TRACeR that can map cells harboring HIV that continue producing small amounts of virus despite treatment. TRACeRs can then be converted to molecules that instruct the body’s naturally occurring killer T cells to specifically eliminate these cells.

Finally, Sharon Lewin, PhD, of the Peter Doherty Institute and Thumbi Ndung’u, PhD, of the Africa Health Research Institute, will build on previous amfAR-funded research that demonstrated promising results using lipid nanoparticles to reactivate dormant HIV. Once awoken, these cells can be targeted for destruction by the immune system. Drs. Lewin and Ndung’u will now test this approach on HIV subtypes that are more prevalent throughout Asia and Africa, where most people living with HIV reside.

More than 40 million people are living with HIV around the world. While most remain healthy thanks to medications developed through decades of prior HIV research, nearly 10 million people still lack access to them. To be effective, an HIV cure must be scalable, affordable, and accessible to everyone across all subtypes of HIV.

About amfAR
amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, is one of the world’s leading nonprofit organizations dedicated to the support of AIDS research, HIV prevention, treatment education, and advocacy. Since 1985, amfAR has raised nearly $950 million in support of its programs and has awarded more than 3,800 grants to research teams worldwide. Learn more at www.amfAR.org

Media contacts:
Robert Kessler, Program Communications Manager
(212) 806-1602
robert.kessler@amfar.org

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