Rockefeller researchers receive Gates Foundation grant for HIV vaccine research

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced 16 grants totaling $287 million to create an international network of highly collaborative research consortia focused on accelerating the pace of HIV vaccine development. The grants will support a range of innovative approaches for designing an effective HIV vaccine, and bring together more than 165 investigators from 19 countries to tackle some of the biggest scientific challenges facing the field.

Among the recipients is David D. Ho, scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Irene Diamond Professor at Rockefeller University. Ho received $24.7 million to lead a consortium of investigators on a project titled “Harnessing Dendritic Cells and Innate Immune Activation Signals to Guide HIV-1 Vaccine Development.” Ho and his coworkers will attempt to design HIV vaccine candidates that specifically target dendritic cells, a part of the immune system that is believed to play an important role in enhancing both antibody and cellular immune responses. The investigators will develop vaccine candidates that include protein, virus-like particle, and viral vector constructs that specifically bind to the surface of dendritic cells. In addition, the consortium will study the use of chemicals called glycolipids, which activate immune cells that stimulate dendritic cells. Although glycolipids have been used to treat cancer, they have never been studied in humans to improve the immune responses elicited by vaccines.

In addition to Ho, other members of the consortium include Rockefeller University immunologists Ralph Steinman, Henry G. Kunkel Professor and discoverer of the dendritic cell; Michel Nussenzweig, Sherman Fairchild Professor; and Jeffrey Ravetch, Theresa and Eugene M. Lang Professor.

More information about the AIDS vaccine development grants can be found at the Gates Foundation Web site.

Last year, Rockefeller University researchers were awarded $14 million in grants from the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, to develop novel vaccine approaches to control HIV, malaria, and other diseases.