GSK, Chapel-Hill Renew $20M Partnership to Discover HIV Treatment

Global specialist HIV company ViiV Healthcare, owned by GSK, and UNC-Chapel Hill recently announced a five-year, $20 million renewal of a public-private partnership to discover a possible HIV treatment. 

The partnership will provide continued funding for the HIV Cure Center and Qura Therapeutics.

Qura Therapeutics, launched in 2015, was the first-of-its-kind in the field of HIV cure. It managed the intellectual property, commercialization, manufacturing, and governance needs of the collaboration. It also provided financial and material support to the UNC HIV Cure Center to discover a cure for HIV.

The two organizations will jointly own Qura Therapeutics.  

The collaboration has brought together the skills of academic and pharmaceutical industry experts to ensure a deep understanding of how HIV works and develop a new approach to tackle HIV to be tested on humans for the first time in the next few years.

“Five years ago when we announced this innovative collaboration, we were inspired by the possibility that with the right resources and research teams, we would be able to make a meaningful impact towards a cure for HIV,” Deborah Waterhouse, CEO of ViiV Healthcare said in the announcement.

“Although there is still much left to do, this public-private partnership is making a difference. We are excited to continue this partnership with UNC-Chapel Hill for another five years and look forward to the contribution of our unique skills and shared commitment could make to finding a cure for HIV.”

When GSK announced this initiative five years ago, the company voiced that it would invest $4 million per year for five years to fund the initial Chapel-Hill based HIV Cure center’s research plan. A small research team from GSK would move to Chapel Hill to be co-located with UNC researchers. 

Zhi Hong, senior vice president and head of the infectious disease therapy area unit at GSK stressed that a lifetime of HIV treatments not only takes an emotional toll on patients, but it places an economic burden on society. But this is slowly changing in countries with limited resources.

“This is why we must dedicate the next 30 years to finding a cure and scaling it up so that one day we will end the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” he said.

The most recent announcement highlighted that ViiV Healthcare and UNC-Chapel Hill are currently working together at the HIV Cure Center, located on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. Qura Therapeutics is focusing on “induce and reduce.” The strategy will identify the companies of HIV that may be hiding in human immune cells while the virus is suppressed through antiretroviral therapy, the announcement highlighted.

Once researchers identify these companies, the virus can be driven out of hiding (induce) so it can be eliminated (reduce). This therapeutic approach aims at the virus specifically while ensuring a minimal impact on the body beyond the hidden infected cells.

“This groundbreaking venture has flourished thanks to the talent and dedication of top scientists and researchers from Carolina and ViiV Healthcare. I am thrilled that this innovative partnership will continue making discoveries and advancing a cure for HIV, one of the most pressing challenges of our time,” said Kevin Guskiewicz, chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill. 

Qura Therapeutics was recently published in the journal Nature for bringing a virus out of hiding. The paper essential explained to readers that a class of drugs new to the HIV field activated signaling pathways in cells that induced the hidden HIV to reactivate and become visible.

“Bringing the virus out of hiding is often seen as the greatest obstacle of curing HIV infection as these hidden, HIV-infected cells can persist despite decades of antiretroviral treatment, and these findings mark significant progress towards a cure for HIV,” the announcement stated.

“Without the Qura partnership we would have not been able to get this far, this fast,” said David Margolis, MD, director of the UNC HIV Cure Center and Sarah Graham Kenan distinguished professor of medicine, microbiology & immunology, and epidemiology at the UNC School of Medicine. “We have accomplished a great deal in less than five years and hope to accomplish a good deal more in the years to come to help people living with HIV around the world.”