UNC, GSK create new company to cure HIV/AIDS

UNC announced a partnership with leading pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline to research and develop a cure for AIDS at a press conference on Monday.

UNC and GSK will create a new company, Qura Therapeutics, and a new center, the HIV Cure Center. Both will be housed on UNC's campus. The joint venture will pool government funding and private capital to work towards finding a cure for AIDS.

“The excitement of this public-private partnership lies in its vast potential,” Chancellor Carol Folt said in a press release Monday. “Carolina has been at the forefront of HIV/AIDS research for the last 30 years. This first of its kind, joint-ownership model is a novel approach toward finding a cure, and we hope it serves as an invitation to the world’s best researchers and scientists. Today, Carolina’s best are taking another major step in the global fight against HIV/AIDS.”

Qura Therapeutics will be responsible for commercialization, manufacturing, governance and intellectual property rights associated with research at the HIV Cure Center.

The HIV Cure center will focus on finding a cure for AIDS using laboratory space on the medical campus and scientists from both GSK and the University. 

GSK, a world leader in HIV drug development, will contribute $20 million to the venture over five years. A team of GSK scientists will relocate to Chapel Hill to work at the HIV Cure Center. 

“Like UNC, GSK has a long legacy of HIV research success. From the development of the world’s first breakthrough medicine for HIV patients in the 1980s, to our leadership in the market today through ViiV Healthcare, we’re continuously challenging ourselves to meet the needs of patients,” GSK CEO Sir Andrew Witty said in the press release. “This partnership is a testament to our past and present leadership, innovation and commitment to this field. We are inspired by the confidence that with the right resources and research teams, we will be able to make a meaningful impact towards a cure for HIV.”

The center will use the "shock and kill" approach towards and HIV cure, which reveals the hidden virus that persists in people infected with HIV even after successful drug treatment. The shock and kill method is designed to clear the last traces of the virus and infected cells to prevent the disease from coming back. 

In 2012 a team of UNC scientists was one of the first to test this new method. The University recently received Food and Drug Administration approval for a new study using this technique 

“After 30 years of developing treatments that successfully manage HIV/AIDS without finding a cure, we need both new research approaches to this difficult medical problem and durable alliances of many partners to sustain the effort that will be needed to reach this goal,” David Margolis, professor of medicine and leader of the Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication, said in the press release. “The ‘shock and kill’ approach has shown significant promise in early translational research on humans and has been the focus of research for the last several years.”