Medical facilities in the national capital, Ottawa, are set to become a global centre for HIV research.
The Ottawa Hospital, The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and the University of Ottawa will combine efforts n a new research project that aims to find a cure for HIV that caused AIDS.
To that end, the project was awarded $8.7 million through the Canadian Initiative for HIV Cure Research, a partnership between the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR) and the International AIDS Society (IAS).
The project is called the Canadian HIV Cure Enterprise.
Dr Johnathan Angel is an HIV specialist with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute as well as teaching at the University of Ottawa.
He is a principal investigator on the new project and co-chair of the project steering committee.
He says. “ Although current treatments are very effective, many have serious side effects, they are very expensive, and they cannot completely eliminate the virus. The goal of this new project is to understand how HIV hides inside certain cells during treatment, and to find a way to kill those infected cells. If we can do this, we’ll be poised to have a cure.”
The announcement of the funding for the project was made by the Honourable Rona Ambrose, Canada’s Minister of Health, on the eve of World AIDS Day, which is December 1
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