Faculty in the Divison of Surgical Sciences Wilton Williams, PhD, Associate Professor of Surgery, and Guido Ferrari, PhD, Professor of Surgery, received an NIH award to fund their collaborative research project titled "Center for Innovative HIV/AIDS Vaccine and Cure Research (CIAVCR)."
The overall goal of Drs. Ferrari and Williams' research is to build upon the development of their vaccine strategy that can "induce protective immune responses in non-human primate models by exploring innovative mRNA constructs for immunogen delivery that can elicit both protective and therapeutic B and T cell responses."
This research has two primary focuses:
- Focus 1: Vaccine-induced neutralizing antibody protection from HIV-1 infection
- Focus 2: Therapeutic vaccine regimen in association with immune modulators for eradication of latent reservoir