A multi-institutional team led by Weill Cornell Medicine has received a five-year, $14.9 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to find ways to remove latent HIV from the cells of individuals with HIV.

Transplanted organs are more likely to be rejected by the immune system when there is a mismatch between donor and recipient human leukocyte antigens (HLA). A Medical University of South Carolina team reports in Frontiers in Immunology that it has fitted regulatory T-cells, whose job is to suppress immune responses, with an artificial receptor and other genetic machinery that enable them to target and neutralize B-cells producing antibodies against the mismatched HLA.