Kumar Leader in Collaborative HIV Cure Research

Priti Kumar, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases), will co-lead the Yale School of Medicine’s HIV Cure Research Program, under a new $ 26.5 million grant from the program National Institutes of Health flagship Martin Delaney Collaboratories (MDC) for HIV cure research.

The team, made up of researchers from the Yale School of Medicine (YSM), Gladstone Institutes, Scripps Research Florida and Weill Cornell Medicine, will partner with the collaborative HIV Obstruction by Programmed Epigenetics (HOPE) project. Kumar will lead the YSM contingent.

“Our approach is to permanently silence the HIV genome, which is integrated into human chromosomes, by exploiting epigenetic mechanisms that already exist in cells, leading to a cure. This contrasts with other approaches currently being explored that activate HIV to kill the infected cell, which can lead to serious complications for patients, ”Kumar explained.

With participants in 12 institutions, the collaborator will use YSM’s humanized and specialized mouse models, developed in Kumar’s lab, to test various therapies developed under this program.

Kumar began this research during his postdoctoral studies at Harvard. She started working with biologics, like siRNA to target RNA viruses. “My interest began in using biologics to cure them and translate them into human infections, and that’s where it led me. Animal models of HIV infection like humanized mice are not common, and there are few institutions with the capacity to conduct this level of research, ”she said.

She credits this job as part of the reason she was recruited to YSM. Kumar began to consider using humanized mouse models for possible HIV treatment. “When I started I think there were 2-3 researchers working on HIV from a basic and translational point of view, but now we have over 30 researchers working with us. I am very happy to say that we are collaborating with so many stellar scientists as they are now using our humanized mouse models as translation systems for their candidate antiretroviral interventions. Our collaborations also extend to the new ERASE-HIV project (Enterprise for Research and Advocacy to Stop and Eradicate-HIV) Martin Delaney Collaboratory.

The five-year grants began in August 2021. Peter Glazer, MD, PhD, Robert E. Hunter Professor of Therapeutic Radiology and Professor of Genetics, Chairman of the Department of Therapeutic Radiology; and Ya-Chi Ho, MD, PhD, associate professor of microbial pathogenesis, Yale School of Public Health and Medicine at YSM are also participating in the Martin Delaney Collaboratories for HIV Cure Research.

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