Wistar is investing $24 million to find a cure for HIV

Forty boxes recently arrived at a mostly empty lab space in University City where the Wistar Institute opened this month a research center that seeks to cure HIV.

Soon, the boxes will be unpacked by a scientist newly hired to join Wistar’s HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center. Wistar plans to hire other researchers as it expands in the new 25,000-square-feet space on the 14th floor of a life sciences building at 3675 Market St.

The lab facility marks Wistar’s first expansion outside its Spruce Street campus a half a mile away. Wistar has designed the space to encourage scientific collaboration. The focus on finding a cure for HIV and other viral diseases aims to build on Wistar’s longtime work as the nation’s first independent biomedical research institute.

“The floor is new, the environment is new, the ability to recruit more people is new, but the agenda and the accomplishments are already here,” said center director Luis Montaner, an HIV researcher.

Wistar’s $24 million investment is funding the center’s lab space and additional researchers. Two research faculty members have been hired so far, with plans to recruit two to three more, Montaner said.

Wistar belongs to the BEAT-HIV Delaney Collaboratory, an international group of researchers led by Montaner, which has received $52 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to research a cure for HIV since its founding in 2016.

The center’s opening comes at a precarious time for HIV programs, with dozens of HIV research grants terminated and billions in global health funding halted under the new administration of President Donald Trump. The center has not been affected by cuts, Montaner said.

More than 39 million people worldwide are living with HIV, including 1.2 million Americans. Today, antiretroviral therapy has become the standard treatment for HIV. It can reduce the amount of virus in one’s body to undetectable levels, but cannot cure the disease. It’s also a lifelong commitment — treatment requires taking a daily pill or getting regular injections.

People who miss treatments are at risk of developing the disease AIDS. A twice-a-year shot that can prevent HIV was approved by the Food and Drug Administration this week, raising hope of halting transmission, but access concerns may limit its potential.

Wistar wants to solve this problem by finding a cure.

“Therapy as the answer is still dependent on economic investment and maintenance, whereas a cure would not be,” Montaner said.

Wistar’s scientists see in recent cancer treatment advances a road map for curing HIV. They consider especially promising techniques that help a patient’s immune system better target and eliminate a specific threat, known as adoptive cellular immunotherapies.

The first such therapy approved for patients, developed nearby at the University of Pennsylvania, was a CAR T-cell therapy — a treatment that involves genetically modifying immune cells — for a type of leukemia.

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With HIV, the key to a cure would be eliminating the “viral reservoir,” the group of infected immune cells where HIV hides. If untreated, HIV will attack the body’s immune system, making it vulnerable to infection and disease.

Today’s standard antiretroviral therapy works by preventing the virus from replicating but it isn’t a permanent solution. If a patient stops receiving therapy, the virus can replicate once more.

The approach is like trying to stop a fleet of cars from taking off by simply taking away the gasoline.

“The cars are still there,” Montaner said. “As soon as the therapy goes away, here comes gallons of gasoline everywhere, and all the cars take off again.”

But eliminating the viral reservoir is challenging. The virus can mutate, for starters, and can also hide in a person’s DNA, making it hard to target. Current therapies cannot find all the cells that contain HIV, Montaner explained.

“The strategies that we’re all developing are providing your immune system with properties that they would not normally have in order to see whether they can cure,” Montaner said.

He published findings in February that suggested the body’s natural killer cells — working inside the immune system to kill tumor cells and infected cells — could be genetically modified to target the viral reservoir. This strategy is currently being tested in animal models. If it works, it would take years for the concept to be evaluated in humans for safety and effectiveness.

Another newly hired scientist at Wistar, Colby Maldini, wants to use T cells, a type of immune cell, to deplete the viral reservoir. His lab started at the center in March and will work on modifying T cells, trying to make them better killers of HIV-infected cells.

He will work alongside the scientist whose boxes just arrived, Qingsheng Li, newly hired from the University of Nebraska. Wistar’s new lab facility promotes shared spaces, unlike traditional research buildings where labs are siloed. If Maldini needs to talk to a scientist from another lab, he can just point and wave.

“By proximity, you’re gonna get pulled into discussions, brainstorm sessions,” Maldini said.

Wistar recently opened its new space with a ribbon-cutting event where scientists and members of the nonprofit institute’s board shared why they are hopeful that their work could help find a long-elusive cure for HIV.

Montaner started HIV research at Wistar in 1995, when AIDS was “a pandemic that was consuming people right and left,” he recalled. Antiretroviral therapy was just starting to become available, and it quickly became clear that the therapy would not be a cure.

“I have stayed on because what was initially thought to be the answer was not the answer,” he said.

The research became more personal to Montaner as he started collaborating with the local community, including people living with HIV.

Over the last decade, Wistar has partnered with the BEAT-HIV Community Advisory Board in Philadelphia to receive community input on its research.

“We come not just as observers, but as partners, as people whose lives have been shaped by this journey, and who carry deep hopes for the future you are helping to build,” said Rease Maddox, a member of the advisory board.