Committed to HIV Cure Therapies Through Novel Research

The UNC HIV Cure Center was created to support novel and impactful research needed to advance therapies to induce an HIV remission.¹ The director of the center is David Margolis, MD, distinguished professor of Medicine, UNC. Margolis and his team have been conducting HIV translational research including investigating basic molecular, virological, and immunological phenomenon, and leveraging insights to develop new interventions in HIV disease.¹

In addition, Margolis is the principal investigator for CARE (Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication), an NIH-funded research organization that seeks to develop the tools to bring an HIV cure from the bench to the clinic. He is the principal investigator of NIH-funded studies combining immunotherapies (antibody-like molecules or antiviral T cell infusions) and small-molecule anti-latency agent (HDAC inhibitor) in FDA-approved investigations to attempt to precisely document the depletion of persistent HIV infection.¹

“Our group is really more focused on curing infection, which is probably a more difficult goal, but I think probably the right, ultimate goal that we should have,” Margolis said.

“We work in the tiniest recesses of science and biology, trying to understand how the virus works once it hides in a cell, how to get it out of hiding, and how to eradicate all the infected cells." He explains this is for people with HIV that are virally suppressed and taking their medicine every day. The goal is to eradicate those hidden, infected cells and help these individuals stop taking daily treatment.

One area of his work has been around combination therapy. For example, he and his team looked at the cancer drug, vorinostat, and immunotherapy and how it can coax HIV-infected cells out of latency and attack them.

"The idea is that when HIV infects a person, it enters the cell and becomes like a parasite—a passenger of a few infected cells in the body. Medicines can stop the spread of infection within a person and restore normal immune system function...but that leftover, hidden virus becomes a passenger gene in the infected cell. So we have to treat the cell, sort of like cancer. You're trying to find the cells that are a little abnormal in the sea of all of the other normal cells,” Margolis said.

"We use vorinostat, which is actually a drug developed in cancer for the same reason, it affects cancer cells differently than it does normal cells in a person with cancer. Vorinostat affects HIV infected cells differently than HIV uninfected cells in a person who is HIV positive who's on therapy. Vorinostat induces expression of the virus inside the cell, so the cell now becomes a target for the immune system," Margolis said.

This area of study is in the very early phases of research, and Margolis is looking to either continue his work with vorinostat or utilize other drugs to unveil the HIV virus so it can be seen and cleared.

Reference
1.David Margolis, MD. UNC School of Medicine. Accessed September 4, 2025.
https://www.med.unc.edu/medicine/infdis/people/david-margolis-md/