RIVER
Research In Viral Eradication on HIV Reservoirs.
Targeting the HIV ‘reservoir’ could be the first step to understanding how to cure the infection.
The RIVER trial was one of the first clinical trials to test a new idea of how to cure HIV, through waking a ‘reservoir’ of cells infected with sleeping virus and killing them using the immune system. This idea has been called ‘Kick and Kill’ and this study investigated if it might work.
The RIVER study was conducted by the CHERUB collaboration, an alliance of HIV researchers at Oxford University, Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge, UCL, and King’s College London.
The study was funded by the Medical Research Council with support from industry partners MSD and GSK.
There were 6 UK centres participating in RIVER: Royal Free Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital, Mortimer Market Centre, Royal Sussex County Hospital Brighton, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and Guy’s and St Thomas‘.
The results of the RIVER study were presented at the AIDS Conference in Amsterdam on 24th July 2018.