CELDARA MEDICAL, LLC — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to develop a plasmid-base

Description

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to develop a plasmid-based therapy that will destroy the integrated HIV-1 DNA (HIV- 1 provirus) in infected cells. Current HIV-1 anti-retroviral therapy (ARV) consists of a cocktail of drugsthat blocks viral binding and replication, but does not destroy the HIV-1 provirus. In addition, ARV does not impact the large reservoir of latent HIV-infected cells present in lymphoid tissues and in the gut of infected patients. Moreover, patients must remain on ARV for life, or viral replication will resume once treatment is interrupted. We postulate that cleaving one or more regions within the HIV-1 provirus will impair the ability of an infected cell to transcribe viral genes and to make new vira RNA genomes, and subsequently prevent the production of infectious virions. In addition, this approach would also target and destroy the HIV-1 provirus in latent HIV-infected cells, a population of cells for which anti-retroviral therapy is ineffective. Ou