Skip to main content

HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center

The Wistar Institute’s HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center advances Wistar’s dedication to cure research to meet the worldwide challenge of HIV, with the goal of moving beyond current life-long treatments and eradicating the virus. The Center marshals world-class scientific talent, research expertise, and community support to bring together the very best in bench-to-bedside biomedical research to discover a cure for HIV — and, possibly, other viral threats as well.

The Wistar Institute’s HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center is home to one of the most scientifically productive HIV research programs in the nation, and scientists at the Center follow three concurrent aims:

  • integrate multi-pronged clinical, virus-fighting methods that mimic and enhance the natural strengths of the human immune system;

  • advance successes in personalized medicine to create tailored cure strategies for individual patients and patient groups;

  • expand international collaborations and capacity-building to ensure cure-directed efforts include diverse researchers and persons living with HIV around the world.

More than 39 million people around the world live with HIV, and without a cure, they must depend on lifelong medications. Continued access to therapy can be a limitation for many due to significant global healthcare disparities, which makes a cure — not just treatment — all the more important. Thanks to researchers at Wistar and around the world — whose work has been bolstered by funders’ increased priority to advance a cure — scientific efforts are moving ever closer to success; new technologies and strategies continue being refined and tested; and clinical trials move forward.

The HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center capitalizes on this significant global momentum for cure-directed research with a robust investment to not only discover cure strategies but to prioritize those cure strategies with the best potential for global deployment.


Community and Collaboration

Wistar HIV researchers are part of the Penn CFAR (Center for AIDS Research), one of 19 NIH-funded HIV research centers located at academic and research institutions throughout the United States. The Penn CFAR facilitates interdisciplinary collaborations among basic and clinical HIV and AIDS investigators at the University of Pennsylvania, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and The Wistar Institute.

The Wistar HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center leads the NIH-funded Martin Delaney Collaboratory Program, BEAT-HIV, focused on advancing the HIV cure agenda through both basic and clinical studies. The collaborative team includes more than 85 members worldwide from academia and industry.

The Wistar HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center engages in partnerships with our local HIV community to offer participation in research studies and education on the latest Wistar research to persons living with HIV/AIDS.


The BEAT-HIV Delaney Collaboratory is a consortium of HIV researchers from leading academic research institutions working with government, nonprofit organizations, and industry partners to test combinations of several novel immunotherapies under new preclinical research and clinical trials.


The inaugural episode of The Wistar Institute’s podcast takes a deep dive with Dr. Luis Montaner, one of Wistar’s longest-serving scientists, as he discusses his lab’s groundbreaking HIV cure research and how he decided to dedicate his life to the cause of searching for an HIV cure.

Listen below to the interview with the Director of the HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center.


Leadership and Members

Leadership

Luis J. Montaner, D.V.M., D.Phil.

Director, HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center
  • Executive Vice President
  • Director, HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center
  • Herbert Kean, M.D., Family Professor 
  • Associate Director for Shared Resources, Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center
  • Immunology, Microenvironment & Metastasis Program, Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center
  • Scientific Director, Humanized Models of Disease Facility

Contact Us

For more information on The Wistar Institute’s HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center, please contact:

Beth Peterson
The Wistar Institute
3601 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-898-3934
bpeterson@wistar.org