The first featured speakers for AIDS2026 are here! The world’s largest HIV conference will unite science, policy & community to Rethink. Rebuild. Rise. Proud to see HOPE PI Lish Ndhlovu featured.
Archives: Lab News
Ott Lab news stories
MERIT Grant Awarded to Study Cure for HIV
Weill Cornell Medicine & OHSU have just earned a NIH MERIT Award—a whopping $8.2 million over 5 years—to decode how a rare stem-cell transplant cured a few patients of HIV. Research led by Drs. Lishomwa Ndhlovu & Jonah Sacha will compare survivors (like Timothy Ray Brown, the “Berlin Patient,” Adam Castillejo, Paul Edmonds, Marc Franke) to those who weren’t cured. 🧬
The goal? Identify the immune mechanisms behind viral eradication—and replicate them in novel immunotherapies (in mice, primates, then possibly humans) to deliver a scalable HIV cure—no transplant required.
A massive leap toward ending the AIDS pandemic. 🌍 #HIVCure #Immunotherapy #MedicalBreakthrough
Serial ATI participation Actively Involvement: Richard Strange
I am an 81-year-old white, gay male who first tested HIV-positive in January 1993. My initial instinct was to get involved in the scientific work to defeat this virus by volunteering for trials at the NIH [National Institutes of Health]. Over the course of 15 years I was a participant in 10 studies, mainly phase 1 drug trials. In one trial, I was one of the first two humans to receive the drug after testing in non-human primates! My rationale then was, as it is now—if not me, then who?”
ACTIVELY INVOLVEMENT: RICHARD STRANGE
Serial ATI participation
People living with HIV share their experiences as cure research participants
To develop an HIV cure, most clinical studies involve an analytical treatment interruption (ATI)—a study participant who is living with HIV voluntarily temporarily stops taking their antiretroviral treatment (ART) regimen. Currently, this is the only way to determine if a potential cure strategy will work without ART.
ACTIVELY INVOLVEMENT
People living with HIV share their experiences as cure research participants
ATI: ‘A trial interruptus’ Actively Involvement: Thomas J. Villa
Thomas J. Villa works to help end the HIV epidemic as a writer, Community Advisor to and serial participant in HIV clinical research. Tom is an Ambassador for the HOPE Martin Delaney Collaboratory for HIV Cure Research, a Community Advisor to the RID Martin Delaney Collaboratory, and a contributor to the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Partner Protection Working Group.
ACTIVELY INVOLVEMENT: THOMAS J. VILLA
ATI: ‘A trial interruptus’
Harold McIntyre and Alecia Tramel-McIntyre
Harold McIntyre and Alecia Tramel-McIntyre
Alecia Tramel-McIntyre and Harold McIntyre are known in the community as Mr. and Mrs. HIV. The couple shares how they found each other after diagnosis and use their love story to raise awareness.
Research in Action: Arts build HOPE and a bridge between science and public
Research in Action: Arts build HOPE and a bridge between science and public
Published in The Chronicle Journal Thursday, January 31, 2023.
BY JULIO HELENO GOMES
A world-wide effort to find a lasting cure for one of the biggest epidemics of the modern age is using art to help researchers understand how their work is being perceived and to engage the public in reaching their goal. One of the community engagement leaders is an award-winning Lakehead University professor who hopes such artworks will be on display in Thunder Bay, for Lakehead’s Research and Innovation Week, to shed light on research into HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus.
Check out the rest of the article here.
Go Behind-The-Scenes: World AIDS Day 2022
Get a behind-the-scenes glance at what researchers are working on to uncover a cure for HIV. Raif Derrazi, HOPE’s CAB member, will catch up with Melanie Ott as she tours a biosafety lab at Gladstone Institutes and answers your questions about her HIV research.
This Instagram Live event will include a conversation with Patricia Defechereux. She will walk through an art exhibit presented as part of the Community Arts Integrated Research (CAIR) program that uses the creation of art as a vehicle for investigating and developing HIV cure education.
Message from a 52-year-old Australian mother with HIV living in Sydney recently diagnosed in October:
“If you haven’t watched/listened to Raif’s interview (on his IG) at Gladstone Institute on the research being done to find a cure for HIV, please watch it. It was so informative and their knowledge is mind-blowing. Seeing how passionate and dedicated the scientists are, who are heading up this research, has given me so much hope, that they will find a cure. Not only that, but knowing that these people, who have no idea who we are, are fighting for us, filled me with hope and gratitude. Thank you Gladstone Institute and thank you @RaifDerrazi, I feel so lucky to have found you”
The Search for a Cure
Research has turned HIV from a fatal infection into a chronic illness. Now, scientists want to liberate those living with the virus by subduing it for good.
HOPE’s Investigator, Cedric Feschotte is featured in Science Magazine “Ancient virus may be protecting the human placenta”
HOPE’s Investigator, Cedric Feschotte, is helping to “scan the human genome for ERV sequences they suspected might encode proteins- Ancient virus may be protecting the human placenta”