Results published Feb. 17, 2023, in Immunity have given a wider view of what happens in the earliest stages of HIV infection. Treatments against HIV prevent the replication of the virus, but do not kill the reservoir of latently infected cells that starts to build almost immediately upon infection.
A multiomic analysis of the HIV reservoir has characterized the phenotypic and epigenetic heterogenicity of the virus-infected memory CD4+ T-cell population in people living with HIV taking antiretroviral therapy (ART-PLWH). This is the step towards an ex vivo single-cell atlas for these cells, which could help to design new strategies to eliminate the reservoir.
Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co. Ltd. and Shanghai Senhui Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. have identified pyridine compounds acting as HIV integrase inhibitors reported to be useful for the treatment of HIV infections.
Ice, juice, the exact measure of liquor, a few drops of Angostura... What goes into a good New Year’s Eve cocktail? According to researchers working on vaccines for the most elusive viruses, it will be time soon to toast next-generation vaccines. If 2020 was the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2021 the year of mRNA vaccinations, 2022 brought polyvalent designs of antigens, evaluated highly neutralizing antibodies, and fine-tuned mRNA technology against SARS-CoV-2, HIV and the flu.
A new vaccine that uses the native-like HIV-1 envelope (Env) trimer CH505 and a Toll-like receptor (TLR) 7/8 agonist adjuvant, successfully evaluated in macaques, generated potent polyclonal neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) and a high protection against the infection of the homologous simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV).
Researchers around the world are making advances in understanding how HIV becomes latent and seeking out vulnerabilities that could provide routes to targeting reservoirs and eliminating them. The virus persists in some cells after infection despite antiretroviral therapy (ART) and these contain inactive proviruses that can replicate and trigger the disease.
In HIV research, scientists are directing their efforts in several directions, attempting to prevent the infection, develop a vaccine, stop infection with the HIV virus progressing to AIDS, and eliminating reservoirs of dormant virus.
Clade C subtype-specific HIV-1 infections are responsible for over 48% of global HIV-1 burden. Aiming to develop a vaccine that provides heterologous protection against HIV, a research group led by investigators from the Emory Vaccine Center at Emory University recently reported a novel clade C HIV-1 vaccine.
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