To advance faculty research and enhance the commercialization of Indiana University innovations, the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office has awarded the Lawrence Blatt Endowed Fund for Translational Research to Adarsh Dharan, an assistant professor of biology at IU Bloomington.
The Lawrence Blatt Endowed Fund for Translational Research is designed to support the development of translational research projects in the sciences with industry partners, the establishment of new companies, strengthen patent applications based on research discoveries, and introduce faculty members to IU’s innovation and commercialization ecosystem. The $24,000 award will cover obtaining reagents, consumables and pay for core facilities that are crucial for generating data for Dharan’s project.
“By leveraging both fundamental research and its translational potential, this project promises to generate insights that will impact not just the field of HIV research but also the lives of patients,” said Nick Hammond, associate vice president of innovation and commercialization. “Dr. Dharan’s research exemplifies cutting-edge innovation in the fight against HIV. We are proud to support this vital research, which could bring us one step closer to eradicating HIV latency and improving treatment outcomes for millions worldwide.”
The Innovation and Commercialization Office works closely with faculty, industry and Indiana’s entrepreneurial community to move innovations from IU research into the marketplace, where they can create lasting societal impact. Over the past 15 years, IU has received 2,675 disclosures, resulting in 1,340 issued patents generating 559 licenses, 71 startups and $113 million in revenue.
The award to Dharan is made possible through the generosity of IU alumnus Lawrence M. Blatt, a pioneering virologist and biopharma entrepreneur. Blatt, who earned a bachelor’s degree in microbiology from IU Bloomington’s College of Arts and Sciences in 1983, has cofounded two biopharmaceutical companies and, in 2018, became the CEO of the second one: Aligos Therapeutics, a San Francisco-based biotech discovering and developing curative treatments for hepatologic diseases and viral infections.
Meet Adarsh Dharan
Dharan’s research focuses on identifying therapeutic intervention towards eradicating HIV’s latent reservoir, which is when the HIV virus lays dormant in the body’s immune system cells and does not actively produce new virus particles, making the disease difficult to cure.
Approximately 39.9 million people were living with HIV globally at the end of 2023. However, there is still very little understanding about the process of HIV-1 latency and its contributing factors and there is low efficacy for the drugs that are developed and in clinical trials that attempt to reactivate latency.
Dharan has developed a method that can force HIV-1 to latent reservoir through manipulating the nuclear entry routes of HIV-1. This nuclear entry is through the nuclear pore complex machinery that would allow HIV-1 to enter the nucleus and establish a productive infection.
“As a new junior investigator at IU, this award will enable my lab to generate more preliminary data, which would set the stage for characterizing the mechanism that dictates HIV-1 latency in greater detail and thus identify potential targets for HIV-1 latency reversal.” Dharan said. “This award will help drive my research forward and thus establishing my independent research and funding in the field of infectious diseases.”
Dharan’s goal is to identify potential viral and host targets that dictate viral latency, which allows for the creation of improved latency reversal agents for more effective treatments.
“It is an honor to be the recipient of the Blatt award and to work towards the vision of Lawrence M. Blatt, to contribute towards potential treatment and cure strategies for infectious diseases,” he said.
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