He is the first Otago University researcher to lead a Grand Challenges Explorations project grant from the Gates foundation, university officials say.
Associate Prof Poulter, who has been pursuing fungus-related research at the Otago biochemistry department for the past 40 years, was yesterday "delighted" to gain the funding.
The foundation also expects successful applicants to apply within a year to 18 months for a subsequent $US1 million grant.
Only about 3% of applicants gain initial Grand Challenges Explorations grants, but about a third of those successful candidates also receive the later $US1 million grant.
Prof Poulter and his team will pursue an innovative global health and development research project and will explore a novel method of attacking HIV when it remains inactive in the human cell nucleus, but is a potential reservoir for future infection.
The researchers will assess certain enzymes in fungi, known as "homing endonucleases", for their suitability to eliminate HIV from infected cells.
When HIV was actively replicating in the body, it could be successfully attacked by a cocktail of therapeutic drugs.
But that treatment was ineffective against other HIV when it had remained "completely inactive" in the human cell nucleus, Prof Poulter said in an interview.
"Therefore you can't wreck it. That means you have to keep treating people [indefinitely]."
Several research groups were investigating the potential use of these enzymes to target virus DNA in infected human cells, but many such enzymes also caused toxicity, and could potentially initiate malignancies such as leukaemia.
To avoid this problem, the Otago researchers would study homing endonucleases they had discovered in the nuclear DNA of fungi, and which they predicted would have "very precise DNA target recognition" to avoid damage to the large fungal genomes.
If this prediction proved correct, these enzymes could be modified to seek out and cut HIV DNA within infected cells without risking collateral damage to the human genes.
Prof Poulter's project involves one of more than 85 Grand Challenges Explorations grants announced by the Gates foundation yesterday.
