The Wistar Institute, headquartered in Philadelphia, announced on September 9, 2026 that the NIH awarded it more than $15 million across two grants to advance HIV cure research. Luis J. Montaner, D.V.M., D.Phil., Director of Wistar’s HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center, said: “For the millions of people worldwide who rely on lifelong treatment, the next chapter of HIV cure research is about translating a decade of discovery into the breakthroughs that could finally make an HIV cure possible. Thanks to these two grants, we continue a steady course towards a future HIV cure — I am confident we will get there as we continue reshaping medicine, adding innovative new science to the research toolkit of advances that will not only benefit HIV, but also have direct applications to other cancers and diseases.”
Two Grants, Two Different Jobs
The larger award, $11.2 million over two years, renews the BEAT-HIV Martin Delaney Collaboratory, which Montaner co-directs alongside James L. Riley, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Robert F. Siliciano, M.D., Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The Collaboratory, which now runs through 2028 and builds on five-year grants first awarded in 2016 and 2021, coordinates more than 100 investigators across government, industry, academic, and nonprofit partners around four focus areas: eradicating and measuring the HIV reservoir, antibody and immunotherapy strategies, NK cell, CAR T cell, and gene therapy approaches, and a community engagement model for designing clinical trials. Separately, a five-year, $4.3 million R01 grant will fund work engineering next-generation immunotherapies that enhance NK (natural killer) cells to better identify and eliminate the cells that continue producing HIV even during treatment.
Building on a Decade of Trials
The new funding follows two completed clinical trials Wistar points to as groundwork: Riley led a CAR T cell study attempting HIV eradication, and Montaner led a trial combining broadly neutralizing antibodies with immunotherapy for HIV control. Wistar frames the stakes in global terms, noting that more than 40 million people worldwide live with HIV and currently depend on lifelong treatment rather than a cure.
About The Wistar Institute
The Wistar Institute is the nation’s first independent nonprofit institution devoted exclusively to foundational biomedical research and training. Since 1972, the Institute has held National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Center status. Wistar scientists are dedicated to solving some of the world’s most challenging problems in the field of cancer and immunology, advancing human health through early-stage discovery and training the next generation of biomedical researchers.
