ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF HIV/AIDS 

McMaster University

With the incidence of AIDS on the rise and still no cure for the disease, work being done by Dr. Hendrik Poinar at McMaster University has taken on a sense of urgency.

Through funding provided in part by an Early Researcher Award, Dr. Poinar and his team are using DNA acquired from the oldest known cases of HIV in Africa and North America, together with fecal samples from wild chimpanzees, to trace the evolution of the virus.

"We're extremely fortunate to be able to obtain tissues from these original victims because it will help us uncover how and when HIV began, how it spread from chimps to humans and how the virus has changed over time," explains Dr. Poinar. "We need to understand the fundamentals of that change in order to predict future changes in the virus which we know is evolving all the time."

The goal of Dr. Poinar's research is to help develop a vaccine based on these "ancient" HIV's which would provide protection against all strains of HIV now and in the future.

Researcher: Dr. Hendrik Poinar