A new five-year, $17 million research award has been used to fund and launch Wistar’s new iCure Consortium.  

The goal of the iCure Consortium is to develop more unique and individualized regimens and strategies to cure HIV through tailored care and medicine. 

“It really is the culmination of a years-long investment in HIV, HIV treatment, and cure research,” said Luis Montaner, iCure principal investigator, executive vice president of The Wistar Institute and director of Wistar’s HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center.  

He added that a total of nearly $58 million has been invested from the NIH to help the cause of beating HIV. The new iCure Consortium — one of only two programs in the nation pursuing this objective — is an outgrowth of the BEAT-HIV Martin Delaney Collaboratory and both programs coexist under the umbrella of Wistar’s HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center that opened in 2024. 

Montaner said that the iCure Consortium takes a different approach by using all the things the team has learned and developed as strategies to combat HIV from a population-based approach and turning it into a more direct strategy for specific individuals living with the disease.  

“The broad-based strategies we developed to find one solution to an HIV cure for everyone is now taking a personalized approach,” he added. “Because the virus evolves differently in each individual, iCure Consortium will focus on their unique profile and understand how the virus that they have may be sensitive to the strategies we are using.” 

The project aims to wake up latent virus; target unique weak spots with tailored antibodies; destroy infected cells using supercharged CAR-T and NK cells; and enhance clearance and block relapse with bi-specific binders.

All of these elements will be designed against each patient’s unique virus.  

Over the past several years, the team at Wistar has been able to advance their understanding of HIV in a number of ways. 

“We have been able to describe how HIV persists in the body — after 25 years or more of therapy, and that association with the viral, where the dormant virus persists” Montaner said.

“It’s shed light on how the virus survives in the reservoir and what’s fueling it. We can also describe how areas of the lymph nodes may harbor the virus,” he continued.  

When it comes to the amount of impact Wistar has been able to make up to now and can continue to make in the future, a lot of it comes down to support like what it has received from the NIH and other collaborators.  

“I’m very thankful for the opportunity to take this research team forward, towards a very common and hopefully achievable goal,” said Montaner.  

As he looks toward the future, Montaner said he hopes the team will have designed a strategy that will have been proven and tested as an eventual cure. 

To learn more about the iCure Consortium and all the work being done by the organization, visit the Wistar Institute.