ANU wins grant for HIV research

A researcher from The Australian National University has won a US$100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a new HIV vaccine that might also lead to vaccine breakthroughs for other major diseases.

Dr Charani Ranasinghe from The John Curtin School of Medical Research at ANU is one of 78 grant recipients announced by the Gates Foundation in the fourth funding round of Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to help scientists explore unproven ways to improve health in developing countries. The grants in this round were provided to scientists in 18 countries on six continents, selected from almost 2700 applications.

Dr Ranasinghe and her colleagues are developing a mucosal HIV vaccine that works by limiting the effect of a hormone-like molecule, interleukin-13. This action boosts the body’s immunity to viruses like HIV and related infections.

“Systemic HIV vaccines - which are injected into the body directly - have been routinely failing,” Dr Ranasinghe says. “We’re very hopeful about our mucosal/systemic combined vaccine. It will enable strong immune responses at all mucosal surfaces, such as genital and rectal tissue and the gut, which are the primary sites of HIV infection. This is our best shot to date.”

Dr Ranasinghe discovered that when the interleukin-13 molecule is blocked, the efficiency of the body’s killer T cells is greatly improved. These cells play an important role in fighting HIV and other infections. Based on this discovery, Dr Ranasinghe and colleagues, including Dr Ron Jackson and Professor Ian Ramshaw, have now created a trial vaccine that inhibits interleukin-13 production.

Dr Ranasinghe says that if her team is ultimately successful in developing an effective HIV vaccine for humans, they hope to make it available on a not-for-profit basis to people in the developing world.