HIV/AIDS has affected thousands of lives over the past three decades as scientists are still working toward a cure.
Hundreds of researchers, doctors, university leaders, business leaders, and government officials packed into Marsico Hall for an announcement on a new partnership with UNC directly from Chancellor Carol Folt.
“It’s a first-of-its-kind joint venture between UNC-Chapel Hill and GlaxoSmithKline creating an HIV Cure Center and a new company called Qura Therapeutics,” Folt says. “It will be jointly owned and will focus on discovering a cure [for] HIV/AIDS.”
Folt pointed out Carolina has been a leader for research toward finding a cure since its first patient was admitted in 1981.
“[By] conducting decades of research and clinical trials and compassionate patient care,” she says, “we have become a world leader in studying and testing approaches that will allow us to prevent transmission and eradicate the infection.”
Sir Andrew Witty is the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline – and his son graduated from Carolina over the weekend. He says this announcement does not mean a cure is right around the corner. But it’s a start.
“This is not an easy challenge by any stretch,” he says. “And I don’t think anybody who’s involved in putting this partnership together and creating this new company today really has any other view than this is a difficult mission.”
The new company, Qura Therapeutics, and the HIV Cure Center will be located on the campus of UNC, and ownership of the company will be split 50/50 by Carolina and GSK, according to Folt.
“This is a highly unusual structure,” Folt says. “But it will allow our team to actively embrace the commercialization and integrate the science, drug development, and manufacturing that will be necessary to address this cure from all angles.”
GlaxoSmithKline will invest four million dollars per year over the next five years to fund the initial HIV Cure center research plan and a small research team from GSK will be moving to Chapel Hill to work with UNC researchers on the project.
Witty was quick to say that a cure will not be found overnight and that this will be a long process. One that will likely include the extension of the current contract several times over and the inclusion of more partners to ultimately find a cure for a disease that has touched so many lives.
Doctor David Margolis is the leader of the Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication and he summed the announcement up very nicely, saying, “It’s time to go to work.”
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