Avigen Receives Grant


Avigen Receives Grant

Being Alive; February 1994
Henry E. Chang

Avigen Inc. of Alameda, California, recently announced that it is sharing a $1.5 million research grant award from the National Cooperative Drug Discovery Group of National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases with investigators at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Alabama. The money will be used to develop a gene-based therapy for HIV treatment.

The three year grant will fund three interdependent projects focused on an antiviral technology called "capsid targeted viral inactivation" (CTVI). The technology involves creating a hybrid gene that, when transferred into HIV-infected cells, targets and destroys the virus as it replicates. This then decreases the overall viral burden. The principal goal of the project is to study the role that accessory virus proteins, known as Vpx and Vpr, play in the life cycle of HIV.

Avigen scientists will use adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors to deliver CTVI gene constructs to cells in culture to test for anti-HIV activity. The lab findings will be used to support eventual primate studies and human clinical trials.


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