This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242) provides $881,439 to study the evolution and latency of HIV in people infected with subtype C virus. The research aims to: 1) determine the frequency of macrophage-tropic virus evolution in the central nervous system (CNS); 2) identify cell types expressing virus in the CNS; 3) compare viral DNA reservoirs in the CNS versus lymphoid tissue; and 4)...
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), through the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242) administered by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), has awarded a $434,500 R21 grant to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to investigate the epigenetic mechanisms controlling HIV latency and neuropathogenesis in microglia. The project aims to use single-cell multi-omics approaches and state-of-the-art sequencing technologies to characterize the transcriptomic and...
This $745,822 Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242) supports research to investigate the role of the PERK kinase in HIV-induced neuroinflammation and its contribution to neurocognitive impairment and mental health disruption in people with HIV. The award will fund a 5-year study led by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania to use biochemical, cellular, and pharmacological approaches to assess...
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) awarded a $985,984 Project Grant under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242) to The Henry M. Jackson Foundation For The Advancement Of Military Medicine, Inc. (HJF) to determine the interplay between mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells and the translocated microbiome in HIV-induced neuroinflammation. The key objectives are to longitudinally compare the relationships between the gut microbiome, MAIT cells in cerebrospinal...
This $678,674 federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242) aims to identify the molecular mechanisms that trigger the activation of intracellular innate immunity in microglia and characterize the cellular crosstalk between HIV-infected and non-infected cells in the brain under physiological concentrations of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART). The award to Rush University Medical Center will...
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) awarded a $216,000 Project Grant (CFDA 93.242 - Mental Health Research Grants) to The Johns Hopkins University to support the "The Johns Hopkins NeuroHIV Comorbidities Scholar Program (JH-NeuroPhytes)". The purpose of the program is to significantly increase the persistence and career progression of undergraduate and master's level students into graduate-level training in NeuroHIV or closely aligned research areas. Over a 5-year period,...
This Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242), aims to evaluate social brain function in people with HIV (PWH) using an RDoC-based approach. The $733,355 award, granted on March 1, 2025, will fund a study to examine neural circuits and performance related to two core RDoC-recommended social cognitive constructs: perceiving social cues and understanding others. The study will also explore the...
This $396,541 Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242) aims to uncover fundamental mechanisms and key features governing the interactions between antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and the blood-brain barrier (BBB) components. The overall goal is to improve the ability of ARVs to penetrate and treat HIV infection in the brain. The University of Colorado, as the prime awardee, will employ a physiologically...
This $983,672 Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279) will support research to spatially characterize HIV-host cellular interactions within the central nervous system (CNS) of people with HIV (PWH). The research will leverage the Longitudinal Postmortem Systematic Investigation of Sudden Cardiac Death (POST SCD) study, a unique resource of brain tissue samples from over 85 PWH, including 80% on...
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) awarded a $653,677 Project Grant (CFDA 93.242 Mental Health Research Grants) to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to implement a cluster randomized control trial (CRCT) to test the impact of a long-term, dynamic choice intervention on 12-month viral suppression among HIV patients experiencing repeated and prolonged treatment interruptions in Malawi. This 5-year research project, titled "ONGOING DYNAMIC CHOICE TO ADDRESS HIV...
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) awarded a $1,454,724 Project Grant (CFDA 93.242 - Mental Health Research Grants) to the University of Pittsburgh to conduct research on understanding the mechanisms involved in HIV-1 central nervous system (CNS) latency. The project aims to identify key factors, pathways, and regulators that determine the establishment, maintenance, and reactivation of latent HIV-1 virus in brain myeloid cell lineages, which are distinct from latently infected CD4+ T cells in the periphery.
The University of Pittsburgh is collaborating with the University of California, San Diego and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as sub-awardees to support various aspects of the research. The sub-awards total $200,000 and will help define the on-off switches involved in myeloid cell reservoirs and HIV-1 latency in the CNS using in vitro 3D-CNS organoids, a humanized mouse model, and a systems biology approach. The goal is to identify new therapeutic targets that are unique for myeloid cells in the CNS, which can improve treatment for people living with HIV and contribute to the development of an HIV-1 cure.