There are 38 million people with HIV worldwide. Many of these people take lifelong medication that ensures that the virus cannot spread in the body. The virus can, however, hide in the body, and this makes it difficult to find a cure. We need to figure out how to safely ‘wake’ up the virus, while strengthening the immune system so that the virus cannot spread further in the body. In this project, a collaborative team of people with HIV, scientists, medical specialists, and pharmaceutical partners will work together on finding an acceptable HIV cure for everyone, everywhere.

The DARTBAC project will prepare the Netherlands for the time when antibiotics are much less effective in the prevention and eradication of infection due to AntiMicrobial Resistance (AMR). DARTBAC will, from a material perspective, develop new antimicrobial technologies that are not based on antibiotics to target infection prevention and eradication on implant surfaces, in hard tissues and in soft tissues and assess their safety and efficacy in in vitro and in vivo models. In this way, we are unique yet synergistic with most other initiatives that focus on an antibiotics approach. Collectively, we are bridging the entire knowledge-chain regarding development of new material technologies to combat AMR. DARTBAC will develop a new workflow based on AOPs of predictive in vitro and in vivo models to test safety and efficacy of newly developed antimicrobial technology in order to shorten the time to market. DARTBAC will enhance the therapeutic efficacy of current antibiotics by combination therapy and we will develop and validate these technologies so that they can be brought to the market within the project timeframe. Finally, we will maintain awareness of the emerging AMR problem in the Netherlands by informing the general public and HealthCare Practitioners (HCPs). This increased AMR awareness by HCPs, the general public, and healthcare policy makers can speed up acceptance and market introduction of these technologies both nationally and internationally. Moreover, such acceptance will ensure that insurance providers and advisory bodies adopt and reimburse new treatment approaches quicker, thereby accelerating clinical implementation. A successful DARTBAC project with the combination of these goals and objectives can prevent a rise in infection percentage due to AMR, minimize the effect of AMR in the Netherlands, and work towards a Dutch society that is less dependent on antibiotic therapy for infection, prevention, and treatment.

Antibiotic resistance is a major increasing problem in modern medicine. Therefore, novel antimicrobials are badly needed. Antimicrobial peptides are a large group of candidates for this, but it is difficult and laborious to identify the peptides with optimal activity. For this, we developed the Arificial Intelligence / Machine learning tool "CalcAMP", which allows highly reliable prediction of antimicrobial activity of peptides. Using CalcAMP and extensive laboratory verification of predicted activities, we developed 2 antimicrobial peptides, illustrating the power of CalcAMP and providing new lead compounds for further development into novel alternatives for antibiotics.

Development of an effective human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine would create a breakthrough in the battle against the ongoing HIV pandemic. Most effective antiviral vaccines that are currently in use rely on the elicitation of neutralizing antibodies by the vaccine. These antibodies can prevent virus infection, however vaccines against HIV have not been able to induce such responses. My hypothesis is that the communication between immune cells is suboptimal by this vaccine and that by utilizing pre-existing immune cells against previously received (childhood) vaccines, will improve the communication between immune cells leading to protective antibody responses after HIV vaccination.