amfAR’s Mission
Founded in 1985, amfAR is dedicated to ending the global HIV/AIDS epidemic through innovative research. To date, amfAR has invested more than $575 million in its programs and has awarded grants to more than 3,300 research teams worldwide. The Foundation has played an important role in many of the breakthroughs that have transformed the response to AIDS, contributing to the development of four of the six main drug classes now available to treat HIV.
For the past decade, amfAR has been focused squarely on developing a cure for HIV. It is currently supporting 13 cure-focused clinical trials, including one that launched in August 2020 at the amfAR Institute for HIV Cure Research in San Francisco.
Responding to COVID-19
With 35 years’ experience as a leader in infectious disease research, amfAR is uniquely positioned to identify gaps in current COVID-19 research efforts and quickly mobilize resources to fill them. After making a strategic decision to temporarily expand our efforts to include research on COVID-19, in April amfAR launched its Fund to Fight COVID-19.
Many amfAR-funded HIV scientists had already pivoted their work to focus on the immediate crisis of COVID-19. amfAR plans to support them, along with other scientists with a variety of expertise, by doing what we’ve done for 35 years: fund research with the greatest potential to produce answers to critical scientific questions.
In addition, like the fight against AIDS, the response to COVID-19 is not simply a struggle between us and a virus. It is a struggle against the inequities that enable both viruses to prey on certain, mostly marginalized, populations. Therefore, amfAR is also working to better understand and address these disparities as they relate to COVID-19. In early May, amfAR released one of the first studies quantifying the impact of COVID-19 on black communities in the U.S., and we are performing further analyses in an effort to improve the nation’s policy responses to the pandemic.
amfAR Fund to Fight COVID-19
Studies being supported in the first round of research grants through the amfAR Fund to Fight COVID-19 include:
Dr. Daniel Kaufmann, an HIV researcher at the University of Montreal, Canada, is studying predictors of antibody responses after severe COVID. He is working with longtime amfAR grantees Drs. Andrés Finzi and Nicolas Chomont, also at the University of Montreal. The team will tap into the Quebec COVID-19 Biobank, established at the beginning of the pandemic to collect biological samples from patients admitted to the hospital. These banked samples will allow Dr. Kaufmann and his team to answer why some people develop antibodies and others do not, how we can predict whether those antibodies will protect against reinfection, and how long the protection will last.
One of the most common and often fatal manifestations of COVID-19 is acute kidney injury. Dr. Matthias Kretzler of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will use a clever technique to understand what happens in the kidneys of those with COVID-19. He aims to understand changes that occur in the kidney while the disease is getting worse and signs that indicate patients are on the mend. He will also develop a tool to predict who would most benefit from anti-inflammatory treatment.
Mission Unchanged
While we continue to pursue a cure for HIV, amfAR is supplementing those efforts with research on COVID-19, with plans to focus on the intersection of these two diseases, for as long as this deadly new threat persists. When the threat of the coronavirus is lifted, we will close out these efforts and continue to dedicate ourselves exclusively to our mission of ending the global AIDS epidemic through innovative research.
