NIH grants $70M over five years to help search for HIV cure

NIH announced on Monday it will provide $70 million over five years to three collaborations searching for an HIV/AIDS cure, making it "the largest single investment yet … into finding a way to rid the virus from the body or at least reduce levels to the point that infected people can stop taking anti-HIV drugs - which many researchers until recently viewed as a hopeless quest," ScienceInsider reports (Cohen, 7/11).

The three grant recipients include teams from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Merck Research Laboratories; the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Sangamo Biosciences Inc.; and the University of California, San Francisco, working with the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute of Florida, according to an NIH press release (7/11).