Objective
"Humans are equipped with a variety of intrinsic immunity or host restriction factors. These evolved under positive selection pressure for diversification and represent a first line of defence against invading viruses. Unfortunately, however, many pathogens have evolved effective antagonists against our defences. For example, the capability of HIV-1 to counteract human restriction factors that interfere with reverse transcription, uncoating and virion release has been a prerequisite for the global spread of AIDS. We are just beginning to understand the diversity and induction of antiretroviral factors and how pandemic HIV-1 group M (major) strains evolved to counteract all of them. Here, I propose to use a genetics, proteomics and evolutionary approach to discover and define as-yet-unknown antiviral effectors and their inducers. To identify novel antiviral factors, we will examine the capability of all primate genes that are under strong positive selection pressure to inhibit HIV and its simian (SIV) precursors. This examination from the evolutionary perspective of the invading pathogen will also reveal which adaptations allowed HIV-1 to cause the AIDS pandemic. Furthermore, complex peptide-protein libraries representing essentially the entire human peptidome, will be utilized to identify novel specific inducers of antiviral restriction factors. My ultimate aim is to unravel the network of inducers and effectors of antiviral immunity - the ""Anti-Virome"" - and to use this knowledge to develop novel effective preventive and therapeutic approaches based on the induction of combinations of antiviral factors targeting different steps of the viral life cycle. The results of this innovative and interdisciplinary program will provide fundamental new insights into intrinsic immunity and may offer alternatives to conventional vaccine and therapeutic approaches because most restriction factors have broad antiviral activity and are thus effective against various pathogens."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteinsproteomics
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologyvirology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiologypandemics
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusesHIV
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsvaccines
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Call for proposal
ERC-2012-ADG_20120314
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
ERC-AG - ERC Advanced GrantHost institution
89081 Ulm
Germany