Merck is making moves against the global epidemic of HIV and AIDS by joining forces with two of the United States’ top universities in collaborative efforts to eradicate HIV globally. The University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) have been chosen as trusted partners of the pharmaceutical giant. In fact, researchers from UNC will include nine other U.S. universities as well, while in tandem Merck scientists will begin to study HIV latency and identify ways to purge persistent infection of the virus from the body.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the NIH, is the primary funding organization for both of these research efforts and Merck will not receive any funding for its participation in either effort. They will play as strict contributors and not profit from these collaborations.
Daria Hazuda, Ph.D., vice president, Merck Research Laboratories, commented:
“Collaboration has been the hallmark of much of the progress made against HIV since the virus was first identified 30 years ago. Continued collaboration is absolutely essential to better understand HIV reservoirs and identify potential approaches to the daunting challenge of eradicating HIV. Merck is honored and excited to participate in these important new undertakings.”
Merck has been engaged in the fight against HIV/AIDS for more than two decades. In 1988, Merck researchers were the first to demonstrate that inhibiting the protease enzyme would prevent replication of HIV; the following year, Merck scientists published the first crystal structure for HIV protease. Years later, Merck scientists were the first to demonstrate inhibition of HIV integrase in vitro and in vivo.
Currently Merck scientists are actively pursuing HIV research against at least five distinct targets and have several HIV compounds in development. Since our first HIV medicines became available, Merck has worked to expand access to these medicines, including through partnerships with others.
Earlier this year the world’s largest pharmaceutical giant in terms of revenue, Pfizer, welcomed Boston into its network of translational research partnerships, called the Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI). Boston joins various locations in California and New York City.
Jose Carlos Gutierrez-Ramos, Ph.D, senior vice president and head of BioTherapeutics Research and Development for Pfizer explains:
“The Centers for Therapeutic Innovation is a network of partnerships between Pfizer and academic medical centers that aims to accelerate and transform drug discovery and development. These partnerships allow leading medical and clinical experts to join with Pfizer’s highly-skilled scientists and advanced drug development capabilities to speed the translation of innovative science into medicines for patients. Our ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and the delivery of promising candidates to the pipeline.”
The UNC Tarheel Merck research team led by the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute at UNC includes nineteen investigators from Case Western Reserve University; Johns Hopkins University; University of California, Davis; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, San Diego; University of California, San Francisco; The Gladstone Institute; University of Minnesota, and the University of Utah.
San Francisco’s UCSF includes collaborators from Johns Hopkins University, the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), the Oregon National Primate Research Center at OHSU, the University of Minnesota, Monash University, the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), the Blood Systems Research Institute, the Karolinska Institute, the University of Miami, and the University of California, Davis.
Merck is both teams’ sole pharmaceutical industry partner.
Written by Sy Kraft