U. scientist gets grant for HIV research

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a five-year, $19.2 million grant to University of Utah biochemist Wesley I. Sundquist to establish an HIV research center to study the structural biology of the virus, which is responsible for AIDS.

Centers grants are split among different institutions that collaborate to reach a common goal. Sundquist will serve as principal investigator of a team that includes five researchers from the U. and six from four other institutions, the California Institute of Technology, the Scripps Research Institute, Northwestern University and the University of Virginia.

Together, they will study the molecular structure of HIV to understand how the virus interacts and functions in the cell, said one of the U. senior investigators, Chris Hill, a professor of biochemistry.

Sundquist hopes research will lead to a way to stop the virus. "Host cells can protect themselves from the virus in a number of ways," he said. "We want to understand how cells can recognize the virus and fight it."

Similar grants were awarded by NIH to establish two other HIV centers, as well, one at the University of California/San Francisco and the other at University of Pittsburgh. Each will tackle different HIV-related research projects with their own collaborating partners.

The U. center, which will get $3.8 million the first year, will examine several different issues, including how HIV virus particles get into and out of cells.

They know, for instance, that it basically hijacks a cellular pathway that usually delivers proteins to specialized compartments within a cell in order to get out. It's a complicated cellular pathway that has many, many protein components, and Hill said blocking the hijacking could stop the virus from spreading.

The researchers that make up the center all have different but very complementary technological and methodological expertise, Hill says. Many of them have collaborated with each other in different combinations and on different studies before.

While Sundquist was awarded the grant and will be responsible for reporting to NIH, individual scientists have a fair amount of latitude in their research. "Our type of work is not top-down, you will chase that today. You chase what you can and what's feasible," Hill says. They'll all cooperate with and support each other's efforts and they'll have meetings among the 12 senior investigators twice a year to discuss what they're doing, what they plan and how their work could interact.

They also have meetings and education presentations over the Web. And they share data and results as they go.