Two VHIR projects receive a Gilead Fellowships for Biomedical Research

Gilead pharma recently delivered the V Edition of the Biomedical Research Fellowships in which two researchers from the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) were awarded. On the one hand, Dr. Francisco Rodríguez Frias, IP of the Hepatic Diseases Research Group, with the project 'Diagnostic strategy for the referral of patients with active HCV infection from primary care'. And on the other, the Dra. María José Buzón, IP of the research group on Infectious Diseases, for the project 'Targeting residual inflammation for the elimination of specific cellular HIV reservoirs in ART-treated individuals'.

Diagnostic strategy for the referral of patients with active HCV infection from primary care

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) represents a major public health burden worldwide. According to recent WHO estimates, more than 100 million people worldwide are anti-HCV seropositives. Taking the advantage that at the Vall d'Hebron Clinical Laboratories we attend more than 1.5 million people, we have decided the implementation of a standardized intervention program helping primary care physicians to decide the request an optimal diagnosis profile for detect hepatitis C active infection. The methodology of the project consist in a prospective pilot study of one year duration, monitoring determinations of antibodies to the hepatitis C virus (anti-HCV) referred to our laboratory from primary care.

Patients testing positive will be followed-up, assessing HCV RNA determinations in the clinical requests and we will make appropriate recommendations to the primary care physicians. The compliance with these recommendations will be monitored. Finally, the impact of the diagnosis and patient referral strategy proposed will be assessed during the first 10 months, when we expect to having included about 2000 anti-HCV positive cases. "The observed rate of request of viral load determination it is around 20% of the seropositive cases, and through the strategy included in the present project the aim is to increasse this rate to 50% to 60% ,which means two to three times more chronic hepatitis C diagnosis and hence two to three times more patients with the opportunity to be treated, and be cured", explains Dr. Rodríguez.

Targeting residual inflammation for the elimination of specific cellular HIV reservoirs in ART-treated individuals

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) in HIV-infected individuals controls viral burden, but does not completely reduce immune inflammation nor eliminate the infection. An established link exists between HIV persistence in patients treated with ART and residual inflammation, but how immune hiperactivation influences the size and composition of the latent viral reservoir has been poorly studied. "We hypothesize that maintenance of specific cellular HIV reservoirs might be directly linked to different mechanism that promote residual inflammation", explains Dr. Buzón.

In this project, we are planning to deeply characterize the distribution of the latent HIV reservoir in different cell subsets and its relationship with the cytokines profile in ART-treated patients. Viral reservoir markers will be quantified in different CD4 T cell subpopulations, including memory stem cells and CD32+ CD4+ T cells. Plasma markers and hyperimmune activation in PBMCS will be conjointly quantified in the same samples from ART-treated patients.

The knowledge of immune mechanisms that govern the persistence of distinct subpopulations of CD4 T cells harboring HIV might help with the design of new therapies directed to deplete the most long-lived cellular reservoir for HIV.