Project Grant R37AI203456

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded The General Hospital Corporation (doing business as Massachusetts General Hospital) $824,998 on September 3, 2026, under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855) to investigate natural killer cell targeting of HIV-1 reservoir cells.

The award funds research into the immune mechanisms that recognize and eliminate HIV-1 reservoir cells—a small subset of CD4 T cells harboring integrated HIV-1 DNA that persist for life and represent a principal barrier to HIV cure. The project tests the hypothesis that HIV-1 reservoir cells are vulnerable to innate immune recognition by KIR2DL1-educated natural killer cells activated through NKG2C-HLA-E interactions. The research will examine immune-mediated selection pressures that eliminate proviruses in permissive chromatin regions while favoring those embedded in repressive heterochromatin, with the goal of delineating immune pathways essential for designing immune-based strategies for HIV-1 cure. Work is performed in Boston, Massachusetts.

The project runs from September 3, 2026, through August 31, 2031. Massachusetts General Hospital's Research Management Division serves as the recipient and functions as a prime research performer across the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and specialty agencies, with substantial federal research portfolios in infectious disease, translational therapeutics, oncology, and neuroscience.