Recruitment started for DTG Resist study

DTG Resist

29.06.2022 – The first participant of the multiregional DTG Resist study has been recruited in Zambia mid-June. The DTG Resist study is sponsored by the US National Institute of Health and aims at understanding the contexts in which Dolutegravir (DTG) resistance emerges.

The DTG Resist study is led by ISPM’s Professor Matthias Egger together with experts from the University of Kwazulu Natal (Richard Lessels, Jennifer Giandhari), University of Zurich (Roger Kouyos) and ETH Zurich (Niko Beerenwinkel) and Bristol University (Jonathan Sterne). The project will combine next generation whole genome sequencing with expertise from clinical, epidemiological, biological, and computational science.

The emergence and spread of drug-, particularly DTG-resistant HIV is a major threat to ending the global HIV epidemic. DTG is an antiretroviral medicine used in combination with other drugs for the treatment of HIV infections. As DTG offers a high barrier to the development of drug resistance, the global HIV response heavily relies on this treatment, and it is vital to understand how DTG-resistance emerges in different HIV subtypes and different clinical contexts.

In order to achieve this goal, the DTG Resist study will collect data from established HIV cohorts and samples from around several thousand patients worldwide. Existing HIV cohort data has already been analysed and presented by Tom Loosli, a PhD student at University of Zurich at the International Workshop on HIV and Hepatitis Observational Databases (IWHOD). As the second step of the study, the patients will be prospectively recruited at over 20 clinics in low- and middle-income countries. The project coordinators of ISPM (Lilian Smith, Stefanie Hossmann, Mamatha Sauermann) have been working with all involved collaborators, supporting them with the study preparation and the ethics submissions. With the recruitment start in Zambia, the DTG study has now entered the next phase, which will last two years. The below map gives an overview of the participating cohorts and their project status.

DTG Resist Study Participating Cohorts