Research team receives $2.95M in NIH funding to study cell-derived extracellular vesicle mediated epigenetic HIV silencing in the brain.
A collaboration including researchers from the Center for Infectious Disease Research at George Mason University is developing and characterizing a highly innovative modular approach that will utilize extracellular vesicles to deliver anti-HIV genes to virus-infected cells in the brain in an effort to epigenetically silence HIV expression in a long-term and stable manner.
Fatah Kashanchi, professor of Virology and Director of the Mason Science Laboratory of Molecular Virology, is the primary investigator on the National Institutes of Health funded collaboration which also includes Mason researchers, Yuriy Kim, Anastasia Marie Williams, and Heather Branscome; Lenny Schultz, a professor from The Jackson Laboratory; and Mason Science affiliate faculty, Kevin Morris, professor and director at The Griffith University Cell and Gene Therapy Group, Menzies Health Institute School of Pharmacology and Medical Sciences, in Queensland, Australia.
The methodology incorporates extracellular exosome delivery. Kashanchi said the effort could be likened to a package delivery. “The team is creating packages that are sent directly to a specific address within the central nervous system, perhaps to the brain ‘zip code’ or to the lymph nodes.” This package will change the actual structure of that viral genome in the way it twists and turns so it can no longer be active. “For example, think of a normal double helix, then change the structure so that DNA is no longer usable, effectively silencing it with no side effects,” Kashanchi said. This silencing period would be in effect for the individual’s lifetime.
This method may also lead to a therapeutically relevant means to not only control HIV/HAND, (HAND is an HIV associated neurocognitive disorder that impacts memory and thinking), but could usher in a new highly innovative methodology that controls the epigenetic state of those genes involved in various other human diseases.
Kashanchi received $631,369 of the anticipated $2.95M from the National Institutes of Health for this research. Funding began in August 2023 and will end in late May 2028.
This and other breakthrough research efforts will be discussed in more detail during the upcoming annual meeting of the American Society of Intercellular Communication, (ASICbio.org), scheduled to occur from October 12 to 15, 2023.