Texas Biomed lands $23 million in funding for HIV vaccine

The Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, has obtained more than $23 million in funding for an HIV vaccine they’re developing in conjunction with medical experts from the U.S. and Europe.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease of the National Institutes of Health donated the funding, hoping to help establish a vaccine approach to HIV that generates immunities to the disease, according to a statement.

Ruth Ruprecht, MD, director of the Texas Biomed AIDS Research program has organized the program by bringing together professionals from backgrounds like imaging, biology and immunology, among others.

"We are very excited about the potential of this project, which is the largest NIH Program Project grant received by Texas Biomed," said Robert Gracy, MD, president of Texas Biomed, in a statement. "Ruth has assembled a quality team to tackle a vaccine approach that is both visionary and sensible in its design and is a great example of the type of research we deliver at Texas Biomed.”

The project, which is slated to last five years, will be broken into three sub-projects examining how mucus plays a role in the transmission of the disease and how antibodies can stop it.

Texas Biomed will be partnering with several other physicians to complete all three stages of the study, including Beth Goins, MD, a professor at University of Texas’ Health Science Center at San Antonio, Peter Fox, MD, a professor and the director of the Research Imaging Institute, and Thomas Hope, MD, a professor in cell and molecular biology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.