Project Lead(s): Godwin Nchinda
Issue
Lack of affordable, rugged, sensitive and selective point-of-care (POC) tests suitable for use in low-resource settings for rapid diagnosis of disease and to monitor disease progression continue to hamper HIV infection management.
An affordable, rapid approach for monitoring HIV-1 infection at the bedside, which does not require significant training, would be of great benefit.
Solution
The team sought to develop a novel, POC, affordable kit for the biological monitoring of HIV-1 infections and assessing the efficacy of HIV-1 vaccines.
The approach was based on a novel antibody (HIVOP) detected by the research group in the sera of some HAART (highly active antiretroviral therapy) naïve HIV-1 infected individuals, which correlates to helper CD4 T cell count, low plasma viral load and non-disease progression.
This biomarker could also serve as an immunological signature applicable at POC for assessing pathogen-specific immunity and could accelerate HIV vaccine development, as the existence of this biomarker appears to correlate with protection to HIV-1.
Outcome
Preliminary screening of 5,000 antiretroviral naïve HIV-1 infected people by helper CD4 T cell count resulted in the recruitment of 1,500 (30 %) HIV-1 infected people with CD4 T cells above 500 cells/mm3, for inclusion for further analysis.
The 1,500 selected individuals were then tested for viral load and those with undetectable viral loads were recruited into the cohort.
A total of 300 patients were monitored for 18 months for the quantitative evolution of the HIVOP biomarker, along with viral load/CD4 T cells count, and five were selected for the production of human hybridomas, which could secrete monoclonal antibodies specific to potential HIV-1 derived HIVOP immunogens.
ELISA positive hybridoma from one patient is being studied to determine the immunogen for the HIVOP biomarker.
The team received additional funding totalling $1.5 million.
This included $46,000 from the Third World Academy of Science (TWAS) to pursue this strategy, which consists of $16,000 for training young Cameroonians to conduct research on these novel biomarkers at the MSc level, and $30,000 dedicated to buy more equipment and reagents for the continuation of the project.
The Cameroonian government has allocated $1.2 million to this project, with $243,539 for more equipment and scientific material specifically for the new HIV-1 biomarker (CIRCB 2014). In addition, $252,815 has also been budgeted for translating the novel HIV-1 monitoring biomarker development strategy into clinical application.
In collaboration with Korean colleagues, the team has also secured $25,000 for studies related to biomarkers associated with the long-term management of HIV-1 infection.