The new amfAR Research Consortium on HIV Eradication (ARCHE) has awarded its first-round research grants to four teams that will develop collaborative strategies for curing HIV/AIDS.

“amfAR has a long history of funding breakthrough research, and developing this consortium gives me great hope that we will catalyze the research for a cure for HIV/AIDS,” said amfAR CEO Kevin Robert Frost. “We believe that a collaborative research effort has the potential to dramatically accelerate the search for a cure.”

Grant recipients will undertake projects in three areas: the search for a sterilizing cure that would eliminate all HIV in the body; the search for a functional cure that would achieve permanent viral suppression without therapy; and the study of viral reservoirs, which must be overcome to achieve a cure.

The ARCHE-funded research teams include: the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease and Karolinska Institutet in Solna, Sweden; the University of California at San Francisco; Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; and the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope in Duarte, California.