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Shiu-Lok Hu part of team that receives $15.5 million to study HIV antibodies

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Shiu-Lok Hu, WaNPRC core staff scientist and UW professor of microbiology and pharmaceutics, is part of a research team that received a five-year, $15.5 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the HIV Vaccine Research and Design (HIVRAD) program.

The project, titled “Strategies for Eliciting Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies against Conserved HIV-1 Quaternary Epitopes,” is led by Abraham Pinter at the Public Health Research Institute Center at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Collaborators include researchers from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the Department of Pediatrics at Tulane University Health Science Center.

Hu’s portion of the grant, totaling $4.06 million, will be used to develop an animal model to study how such antibodies against HIV are generated. The results of his work may provide insights on the nature of these antibodies and inform the design of effective vaccines.