HIV pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences announced a total of $7.5 million in grants to five research initiatives focused on advancing an HIV cure. This is the second round of recipients in Gilead’s HIV cure grant program.

According to Gilead’s press release, the recipients are listed below according to the related institution, the principal investigator and the project’s name:

  • University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub—Alexander Marson, MD, PhD—An Integrated CRISPR Platform to Discover Regulators of HIV Latency in Primary Human T Cells

  • Institute of Human Genetics, French National Center for Scientific Research and University of Montpellier—Monsef Benkirane, PhD—Paving the Way Towards Elimination of HIV Persistent CD4T Cell In Vivo

  • University of Massachusetts Medical School—Abraham L. Brass, MD, PhD—A CRISPR/Cas9 Screen to Discover HIV-1 Latency Factors

  • Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, AIDS and Cancer Virus Program—Jeffrey D. Lifson, MD—TLR Ligand Augmented, Tissue Homing AIDS Virus-Specific Adoptive Cell Therapy to Target Viral Reservoirs

  • Dana-Farber Cancer Institute—Joseph G. Sodroski, MD—Unlocking HIV-1 Env to Deplete Viral Reservoirs

“Finding a cure for HIV is a formidable challenge to the scientific community,” said William Lee, PhD, executive vice president of research at Gilead Sciences, in the press release. “Together with our newest grant recipients, all of whom have a record of excellence in their research, we can take collective steps to help end this devastating epidemic. We are proud to support these leaders in HIV research and are confident in their ability to make meaningful and measurable contributions in this area of unmet medical need.”

To read about Gilead’s previous grants for cure research, click here. And to read a collection of related POZ articles, click #Cure.