{"314331":{"#nid":"314331","#data":{"type":"news","title":"One Step Closer","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESantangelo part of $5.5 million NIH research grant aimed at curing HIV.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis could be the one, the project that Philip Santangelo will be talking about when he\u2019s 80 and retired and rocking on the front porch, in some distant future \u2013 a promising future for mankind because, well, this could be the one. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESantangelo, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is helping lead a research team that was recently awarded a $5.5 million grant from the NIH\/NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) for their role in a national, multi-pronged effort to once and for all cure HIV\/AIDS. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cThis is like the Holy Grail for a molecular imaging person who\u2019s interested in infectious disease. From my point of view, this is it, this is huge,\u201d says Santangelo, who is partnering with Emory\u2019s Francois Villinger as principal investigators on the research, supported by the aforementioned R01 (which is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by the National Institutes of Health, or NIH). \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe prospect of eliminating HIV from infected patients may be achievable with novel anti-retroviral therapies, but it would require new tools with greater sensitivity than what is now available. So the research aims to create and improve imaging technology, to better monitor HIV reservoirs. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cThis was an RFA [Request for Application]. It was a response to an RFA regarding delivering therapeutics to active viral reservoirs,\u201d Santangelo explains. \u201cAt NIH right now, especially at NIAID, they have a huge emphasis on trying to cure HIV.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut here\u2019s the dilemma Santangelo, et al, are looking at: A person who\u2019s infected with the HIV virus is treated with anti-retroviral therapies. It appears to work. Within a month, the virus is undetectable in the blood stream. It\u2019s been suppressed. But if you take the patient off the therapy, the virus comes back. It rebounds. \u201cThe drugs work but they are not sufficient to clear the virus. And really, we don\u2019t know why that is yet,\u201d Santangelo says. \u201cWhere is the virus? Where are the active reservoirs during suppression?\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe prospect of eliminating HIV from infected patients may be close at hand, but such a lofty goal will require new tools with greater sensitivity than currently available to monitor the progress of novel anti-retroviral therapies \u2013 not only in blood but also in organs that harbor such reservoirs and sites of residual viral replication \u003Cem\u003Ein vivo\u003C\/em\u003E. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe\u2019re not necessarily in this project, quote, \u0027creating the cure.\u0027 But we\u2019re creating a tool that\u2019s going to give us a lot more information about how you might go about doing that,\u201d Santangelo says. \u201cOtherwise, it\u2019s a shot in the dark, you\u2019re just trying different approaches. It\u2019s trial and error. In the drug development world, trial and error is useful, but not ideal, and certainly not efficient.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis research and resulting improvements in imaging technology, he says, will eventually give drug developers more information than they\u2019ve had before, about how drugs are affecting very specific parts of the body. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cIt\u2019s about giving them much more powerful information about what\u2019s happening, as opposed to downstream information,\u201d says Santangelo, whose research areas include molecular imaging, nano-biophotonics, and optical microscopy. The long-term aim is to cure HIV, he adds, \u201cand we\u2019re working on a tool to help facilitate that.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd that, he adds, is the reason the research got its funding \u2013 the NIH wants this tool in its toolbox. The grant covers five years, but it\u2019s been a seven-year journey to this point. It began with a discussion between Santangelo and Emory professor Eric Hunter, whose research is focused on the molecular biology of HIV and other retroviruses. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe were sitting around a table and Eric basically said, \u2018one thing we\u2019d like to know is, where is the virus? Is there a way to image this?\u2019 I said, \u2018I have no idea, but let\u2019s see if we can figure that out.\u2019 So I went back to the drawing board and thought about ways to approach the problem,\u201d Santangelo says. \u201cBut that\u2019s how it started \u2013 a group of people sitting around the table, asking, \u2018how do we address this?\u2019 and me being crazy enough to say, \u2018I\u2019ll try this,\u2019 because I don\u2019t say no to anything.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHunter introduced Santangelo to researcher\/pathologist Villinger. They went after and received a $30,000 boost from the Woodruff Foundation, then got $100,000 from the Georgia Research Alliance, \u201cand these were so important in pushing the momentum forward,\u201d Santangelo says. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThen they received $450,000 from the NIH in the form of an Exploratory\/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21) and now, $5.5 million, to support the work of an all-star team of researchers, including (among others) principal investigators Santangelo and Villinger, as well as Ray Schinazi, who directs the Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology at Emory, and is a co-investigator. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe overall goal, according to Santangelo, is to create or improve an imaging tool that will determine how the virus is being affected by a new drug strategy, and also to help promote new drugs that Schinazi is working on \u2013 \u201cto clear HIV, and also to make current drugs more effective,\u201d says Santangelo, who believes that by enhancing current imaging technology, particularly CT (computed tomography, or CAT scanning) and PET (positron emission tomography), he can track the reservoirs, including active viral reservoirs. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cIf you can figure out where the reservoirs are, if you can figure out how long they are being affected by the drugs, and how the drugs are actually changing the reservoirs, we might be able to clear them,\u201d says Santangelo, whose eyes light up at the prospect, giving him the look of a kid contemplating a super toy that hasn\u2019t been invented yet. \u201cAnd if you can clear these reservoirs, you could cure AIDS, and if you can cure AIDS, well, that would be pretty awesome.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Santangelo part of $5.5 million NIH research grant aimed at curing HIV."}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ESantangelo part of $5.5 million NIH research grant aimed at curing HIV.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Santangelo part of $5.5 million NIH research grant aimed at curing HIV."}],"uid":"27195","created_gmt":"2014-08-11 08:12:33","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:16:52","author":"Colly Mitchell","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-08-11T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2014-08-11T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"314341":{"id":"314341","type":"image","title":"Phil Santangelo","body":null,"created":"1449244929","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:02:09","changed":"1522182247","gmt_changed":"2018-03-27 20:24:07","alt":"","file":{"fid":"199905","name":"santangelophil-square.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/santangelophil-square_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/santangelophil-square_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1699892,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/santangelophil-square_0.jpg?itok=z1rHWN6q"}}},"media_ids":["314341"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.bme.gatech.edu\/facultystaff\/faculty_record.php?id=105","title":"Philip Santangelo"}],"groups":[{"id":"1254","name":"Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"42941","name":"Art Research"},{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"}],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering \u0026amp; Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}