There are almost 40 million people throughout the world living with HIV-1/AIDs. While current antiretroviral therapies are able to reduce the amount of virus in the blood, HIV remains present in a latent state within T cells. Reactivation of latent HIV-1 in combination with potent antiviral drugs has potential as a strategy to eradicate the virus from infected individuals. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation reports on the development of a multifaceted approach for identifying drug combinations that reverse HIV-1 latency. Robert Siliciano and colleagues collected T cells from HIV-infected individuals and assayed these cells for the presence of HIV-1 within cells and the production and section of intact virus, which is indicative of reactivation. A comparison of various 2-drug combinations revealed that several were able to reverse latency. Importantly, several combinations were able to reactivate HIV-1 without the development of an inflammatory response. The authors also developed a model to correlate changes in HIV-1 RNA in a patient's blood with the amount of virus secreted from isolated T cells. The techniques developed in this study have potential to inform future clinical trials for strategies to eliminate HIV-1 reservoirs in infected individuals.
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TITLE:
Identifying effective HIV-1 latency-reversing drug combinations through ex vivo analysis
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Robert F. Siliciano
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
Phone: 410/955-2958; Fax: 410-955-0964; E-mail: rsiliciano@jhmi.edu
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/80142?key=a249c7d58b0009dcbf45
Journal of Clinical Investigation