Target Grants

amfAR’s Target Grants aim to accelerate research for a cure for HIV, addressing the needs of the 40 million people living with the virus. Focusing on clinical and pre-clinical interventions that can achieve sustained remission or eradication, these grants prioritize studies that explore viable, scalable solutions for global implementation. Research must be validated in vivo or ex vivo, emphasizing the necessity of innovative strategies that push the boundaries of current biomedical understanding.

amfAR’s research initiatives are aimed at finding a cure for HIV that will be useful to the 40M people living with HIV (PLWH). The urgency of our goal demands that we direct our funding to studies that uncover vital knowledge directly applicable to clinical or pre-clinical cure efforts.Persistent reservoirs of virus not cleared by antiretroviral therapy represent the main barrier to a cure. amfAR’s Target Grants should focus on pushing the boundaries of biomedical research to achieve sustained HIV remission or complete viral eradication. Priority will be given to clinical or pre-clinical applications studying pragmatic and scalable interventions that can be implemented globally, including in the communities most affected by the epidemic.The proposed research must be conducted and validated either in vivo (in PLWH, non-human primates, or humanized mice), or ex vivo (in cells isolated from PLWH or infected animals). Interventions tested exclusively in cell lines or in primary cells from HIV-negative individuals will not be considered responsive to this RFP. Submissions that propose only describing the reservoir (i.e., without pre-clinical or clinical interventions) will not be forwarded for review, unless they provide new and critical insights that will meaningfully accelerate HIV cure strategies.Applicants should be able to:
Describe the clinical or pre-clinical intervention they are working towards.Articulate the current stage of development of the proposed approach.In pre-clinical settings, describe the steps needed to progress to clinical testing.