A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: The Mutual Benefit of Investment in HIV and Cancer Research

Key points:

• HIV research has benefitted people living with cancer by helping develop treatments that rely on gene editing and providing vital insights into immune cell mechanisms.

• Cancer research has provided a new understanding of HIV biology and revolutionized treatment paradigms, including next-generation immunotherapies.

• amfAR’s newest investment in cancer research will potentially advance scientific discovery toward creating a new generation of cancer immunotherapies and also inform breakthroughs in curing HIV.

Despite silos and seemingly distinct goals between different scientific fields, biomedical research, and subsequent scientific discovery, is universally uplifted by robust investment. Like a rising tide, breakthroughs that arise from one field can create insights, tools, and technologies that elevate understanding in adjacent fields. Possibly no other relationship is more exemplary of this mutual benefit than that of HIV and cancer research. Here, we spotlight key advances that have flowed in both directions.

How HIV Research Advanced Cancer Therapy
HIV research established the foundation of gene delivery, cellular therapies, and immune reprogramming that are transforming cancer treatment. Decades spent studying lentiviruses, the family of viruses to which HIV belongs, led scientists to develop lentiviral vectors. Lentiviral vectors can safely deliver genetic material into cells and have wholly transformed biomedical research. This technology also enables highly innovative and promising CAR T cell therapies, in which patient T cells are genetically modified to recognize and destroy cancer cells.

Findings from HIV research also revealed how chronic inflammation can tire T cells and limit their function over time, a phenomenon called T cell exhaustion. This discovery helped uncover the fundamental biology that informed the development of immune checkpoint inhibitors, a class of cancer therapies that can reinvigorate exhausted T cells and unlock anti-tumor immune responses.

Study of cellular receptors like CCR5 and CXCR4, which HIV uses to enter immune cells, transformed understanding of how cancer and immune cells communicate and migrate. When cancer cells express CCR5, they migrate further and faster, and recruit suppressed immune cells to the tumor microenvironment (“neighborhood”) preventing anti-cancer responses. These learnings are leading to new treatment strategies aimed at preventing metastasis and altering the tumor microenvironment.

How Cancer Research Revealed HIV Insights
Cancer research has uncovered novel insights into HIV biology and revolutionized treatment paradigms. In fact, the discovery of HIV began with investment in cancer research. With established infrastructure and expertise in virology, cancer researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) co-discovered HIV and demonstrated it was the cause of AIDS. Subsequently, NCI scientists developed the first HIV blood tests and antiretroviral therapy.

A cancer therapy remains the only proven HIV cure. The first, and only, known documented cases of HIV cure arose from stem cell transplants to treat blood cancers. Donor cells carrying a mutation in the CCR5 gene prevented HIV rebound in treated patients. While stem cell transplantation is not a scalable long-term cure strategy, success stories demonstrated that HIV cure was biologically possible.

More recently, advances in cancer immunotherapy arising from foundational HIV research have come full circle. CAR T cells and immune checkpoint blockade are now being adapted to identify and eliminate HIV-infected cells that persist despite antiretroviral therapy. Similarly, novel antibodies, which can bind two targets simultaneously and anchor T cells to cancer cells for enhanced killing, are now being evaluated in the context of HIV. These next-generation immunotherapies may offer entirely new ways to identify and eliminate the hidden HIV reservoir, which remains the most significant barrier to a cure.

The Ripple Effects of Bold and Broad Investment
Scientific progress rarely moves in a straight line, and breakthroughs do not follow the boundaries of disease classification. The same biological pathways, immune mechanisms, and technological platforms prove relevant across fields. Discoveries create currents that carry insights to unexpected places.

The history of HIV and cancer shows that when one field advances, the other rises with it. This is why amfAR’s newest investment in cancer immunology maintains our HIV-focused mission. By supporting work in adjacent fields, we aim to make waves across the research landscape.

Because when that tide rises, it has the potential to lift every boat, including the effort to cure HIV.

Dr. Kelsey Hopland is the program officer of amfAR’s research department.

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