# Centralized Resource to Accurately Quantify Latent and Expressed HIV Reservoirs

> **NIH NIH U24** · ACCELEVIR DIAGNOSTICS, LLC · 2024 · $749,588

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
 Human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1) is a retrovirus that infects CD4+ T cells of the immune
system. If left untreated, HIV-1 infected individuals will progress to AIDS and may ultimately die as a result.
Combination antiretroviral therapy is extremely effective at stopping the replication of HIV-1 in infected
individuals. Despite the success of this therapy at suppressing HIV-1 replication to clinically undetectable
levels, antiretroviral therapy is not curative. This is due to the persistence of HIV-1 in a silent, or latent, state
within a subset of CD4+ T cells known as resting memory CD4+ T cells. In this latent state, these infected cells
are not targeted by antiretroviral drugs and cannot be eliminated by the immune system. In HIV-1 infected
individuals, latently infected CD4+ T cells are found at extremely low frequencies (~1 per million resting
memory CD4+ T cells), with the majority found within immune tissues at any given time. This population of
latently infected cells is very stable, demanding that HIV-1 infected individuals remain on antiretroviral therapy
indefinitely to avoid rebound of viremia. As such, this population of latently infected CD4+ T cells is the main
barrier to curing HIV-1 infection.
 Developing strategies to eliminate latently infected cells is a major focus of the NIH, NIAID, and the
HIV-1 research field. To demonstrate the efficacy of therapeutics targeting the latent reservoir, we must be
able to measure the frequency of latently infected cells using rapid and accurate assays that can be scaled for
widespread clinical use in both peripheral blood and immune tissues. Accelevir Diagnostics, LLC is therefore
developing an NIAID resource to perform three innovative molecular assays to accurately measure the size of
the latent reservoir, the amount of residual viremia present in the peripheral blood, and the transcriptional
activity of persistent proviruses. Broadly, this proposal will provide funding to support performance of these
assays for the HIV-1 cure research community in a centralized location using standard operating procedures
for both laboratory research and clinical trials.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10824391
- **Project number:** 5U24AI143502-05
- **Recipient organization:** ACCELEVIR DIAGNOSTICS, LLC
- **Principal Investigator:** Gregory Michael Laird
- **Activity code:** U24 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $749,588
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-04-13 → 2025-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10824391

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10824391, Centralized Resource to Accurately Quantify Latent and Expressed HIV Reservoirs (5U24AI143502-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10824391. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*