AIDS was cured in more than a dozen patients
Weill Cornell Medicine’s more than 30 years of HIV/AIDS clinical trial expertise will be particularly helpful in advancing work the team is doing with the Believe in a Cure Martin Delaney Collaboratory funded by a $28 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The NIH awards the highly competitive grant to investigators with proven experience in innovative vaccine and immunotherapy research. Dr. Nixon is the principal investigator of the project and he and Dr. Jones collaborate with more than a dozen other scientists from Mexico, Canada and Brazil to find and advance the most promising approaches to an HIV cure. Existing therapies for HIV can keep the virus in check and eliminate many of the symptoms associated with advanced AIDS, but if patients stop taking the medications the virus and symptoms come back. A cure would completely eliminate the virus or prevent it from causing symptoms, and may allow patients to discontinue HIV medications and avoid their side effects.