MENU

Advancing HIV Cure Research into the Big Data Age

Advancing HIV Cure Research into the Big Data Age

Project Team: Zabrina Brumme (Health Sciences, SFU), Ryan Morin (Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, SFU), Natalie Kinlock (Health Sciences, SFU), Art Poon (Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Western University), Jeffrey Joy (BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS)

Though there is still no cure for HIV, many now believe that it is possible. Realization of this ultimate goal however will require advancing HIV research - in particular research on the genetics of HIV latency - into the 'Big Data' age. In particular, it is imperative that HIV cure research "scale up" from laborious single-genome-amplification approaches to high-throughput next-generation sequencing methods - but the lack of versatile, user-friendly tools for analysis of such data is a major impediment. More broadly, bioinformatics methods specifically developed for the unique and complex genetic landscape of the within-host latent HIV reservoir are urgently needed to evaluate outcomes from the growing number of HIV cure intervention trials, but such methods are few. The present proposal seeks to strengthen our new interdisciplinary team of molecular, evolutionary and mathematical biologists located both within and outside SFU to develop potentially transformative analytical approaches in HIV cure research, and to disseminate these findings to the community.

Through this Next Big Question Fund project, an interdisciplinary team of molecular, evolutionary and mathematical biologists will develop transformative approaches in HIV cure research.